Make no mistake,the headline figures are a lot better than all analysts predicted 12 months ago saving the government as much as £2b according to some estimates.
However we should get too complacent.As James Moore reminds us in the Indy this morning
the country still has a growing army of eight million "economically inactive" people, with the size of the labour market declining to 28.92 million. The rate of employment is now at its lowest level since the winter of 1996-97.
Despite the number of people out of work falling 7,000 to 2.458 million in the three months to November, and the claimant count dropped by 15,200 to 1.61 million,there are warnings that the rate is set to rise during 2010.
Furthermore the figures show that more people than ever before are working part-time and are trying to find full-time employment thus massaging the figures to a certain extent
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