Comment on today’s unemployment figure from ONS statistician Nick Palmer

Commenting on today’s unemployment rate figure Nick Palmer, senior labour market statistician at the Office for National Statistics, said: “The latest unemployment rate is 7.2%, down 0.4 on the previous quarter.

This is a comparison between the July-September and October-December three-month periods. It is higher than last month’s published figure of 7.1% for September-November. However, it is not directly comparable with the figure published this month, as the Labour Force Survey is not designed to measure monthly changes. The main conclusion that should be drawn from these latest figures is that the rate at which unemployment has been falling is likely to have slowed down.”