UK unemployment has fallen by 5,000, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.
ONS data indicated 2.51 million people were out of work in the three months to April. The jobless rate was unchanged from three months earlier, at 7.8%.
Average earnings in the period were 1.3% up on a year earlier, thanks to a sharp rise in April bonus payments.
Meanwhile, Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants fell a surprise 8,600 in May from a month earlier to 1.51 million.
In April alone, average earnings rose by 3.3%, mainly because many companies paid out their bonuses to workers a month later this year than last year.
Despite this pick-up, the 1.3% jump in total earnings from a year earlier was still below the rate of inflation, with consumer prices up 2.4% in the year to April.
That means that the real purchasing power of wage earners continued to be eroded.
Excluding the effect of bonuses, which were particularly strong in April, earnings rose an even more paltry 0.9% from a year earlier.
Older workers
Unemployment in Scotland was down 6,000 over the three months to April. In Wales there was no change in the jobless total.
In Northern Ireland unemployment was down by 5,000 and in England unemployment was up by 6,000.
A record 29.7 million people are now in work.
The number of employed people over 65 has reached more than a million, the highest since records began in 1971.
Almost one in ten of the over-65s are working, with 615,000 men and 388,000 women in employment.
The figures come a day after another report from the ONS showed the UK’s industrial output rose for the third straight month in April.
BBC
