Employment up for the fifth consecutive quarter

The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance last month fell by 12,500 to 1.54 million, said the Office for National Statistics.

Average earnings increased by 1.4 per cent in the year to December, 0.1 per cent down on the previous month.

Employment rose in the final quarter of 2012, figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal.

Continuing economic downturn

Employment figures have posted a rise in every quarter since the final quarter of 2011, despite the continuing economic downturn.

Last month’s unemployment figures showed a 37,000 fall to 2.49 million in the quarter to November.

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The figures follow news that 3.7 million people have been made redundant since the recession in 2008 – one in seven of all employees – with women particularly badly affected.

A study by the Jobs Economist consultancy said that almost two-thirds of those losing their jobs were men, with most redundancies reported in 2009.

Women hit hard

The past two years have been the worst for women losing their jobs, reflecting public sector spending cuts, said the study.

The research showed that redundancy rates since 2008 have generally been lower than in the late 1990s and early 2000s and shows no sign of rising substantially above pre-recession levels.

Dr John Philpott, director of the Jobs Economist, said the lower than expected redundancy rates were “symptomatic of a longer-term structural change in the economic and business climate which has resulted in a lower propensity to make staff redundant”.