The UK’s unemployment rate in the first three months of this year has fallen to its lowest since 1974.
The rate in the period January to March was 3.7%, a statistically significant fall of 0.1 percentage points over the year.
With 1.257 million people currently out of work it is the first time since records began the number of current job vacancies is actually higher than than the number of people looking for employment.
ONS director of economic statistics Darren Morgan said: “Since the start of the pandemic, around half a million more people have completely disengaged from the labour market.
“However, job vacancies are still rising, reaching yet another record high.
“Indeed, with the latest fall in unemployment, to its lowest rate since 1974, there were actually fewer unemployed people than job vacancies for the first time since records began.
“Strong bonuses in some sectors such as construction and especially finance mean that total pay is continuing to grow faster than prices on average, but underlying regular earnings are now falling sharply in real terms.”
