(Alliance News) - The UK labour market continued to show signs of strength in November with the unemployment rate edging down, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Tuesday.
The UK unemployment rate unexpectedly edged down to 4.1% in the three months to November, having been forecast by analysts to remain steady at 4.2% for the three months to October.
The jobless rate remains 0.1 percentage point above pre-virus levels, but was 0.4 percentage point below the previous three-month period, which ran to August.
Annual growth in total pay - or including bonuses - was 4.2% for the three months to November, and regular pay, which strips out bonuses, rose 3.8%. Both were below the annual UK inflation rate for November, which was 5.1%.
These wage growth figures were as expected and marked a slowdown from the previous month, when growth had been 4.9% and 4.3% respectively.
The labour market appears to have strengthened further in the final month of 2021.
There were 29.5 million payrolled employees in the UK in December, up 184,000 on November and over 400,000 above pre-virus levels.
The number of job vacancies in October to December 2021 rose to a new record of 1.2 million, an increase of 462,000 from its pre-coronavirus January to March 2020 level.
"However, the rate of growth in vacancies continued to slow down. The ratio of vacancies to every 100 employee jobs reached a record high 4.1 in October to December 2021," the ONS said.
By Lucy Heming; lucyheming@alliancenews.com
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