The number of Britons claiming unemployment benefit fell more than expected in May to its lowest in two years in the latest sign that the recovery is moving onto a firmer footing.
The Office for National Statistics said the number of people claiming benefit dropped by 8,600 last month, its seventh consecutive drop. Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a drop of 5,000.
The number of people without a job, based on the wider ILO measure, fell by 5,000 in the three months through April to 2.51 million. The jobless rate held steady at 7.8 percent, as expected.
Britain’s labour market has proved resilient despite the downturn of the past few years, helped by the willingness of workers to accept below inflation wage growth.
via CNBC
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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