Britain’s economy is officially ‘turning a corner’, according to Prime Minister David Cameron. The good news comes in the form of the latest employment figures, proving that the eceonomy is showing signs of recovery.
Unemployment rate falls
According to data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the country’s jobless rate slid to 7.7% between May and July from 7.8% three months earlier as the number of Britons without a job dropped by 24,000 to 2.487 million.
Part-time work on the rise
Compared with the previous year, there were a staggering 275,000 more Britons at work and 105,000 fewer people out of work. The number of people aged 16-64 who are classified as ‘economically inactive’ fell by 52,000 from 2012.
ONS also recorded a notable increase in the number of people working part-time, which more than doubled in May-July 2013 to 1.45 million compared with the same period in 2008. This is the highest rate since the statistics office started collecting data in 1992, the BBC noted. The figures show that around a third of men and 13.5% of women were working part-time whilst trying to find full-time employment.
Weekly earnings up by 1.1%
This positive news also reflects on the payslip; the average pay, excluding bonuses, inched up by 1% compared with the same time last year. Britons’ weekly earnings, including bonus payments, climbed by 1.1% from May to July 2013.
