Unemployment rate higher than expected

By Michael Millar

Date: Wednesday 18 Jan 2012

The UK unemployment rate hit 8.4% in the three months to the end of November, higher than the 8.3% analysts had been expecting.

There were 2.68m unemployed people, up 118,000 on the quarter.

The unemployment rate has not been higher since 1995 and the number of unemployed people has not been higher since 1994, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Total pay (including bonuses) rose by 1.9% on a year earlier, down 0.2% on the three months to October 2011, with both the private and public sectors showing lower pay growth.

Again this was slightly less than the 2% rise that experts had forecast.

There were 1.6m people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) in December 2011, up 1,200 on November.

The number of people claiming JSA for up to six months fell by 16,500 between November and December to reach 928,200.

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