LONDON, Sept 17 - Unemployment in Britain fell again in July as employment rose to a new record high, demonstrating the continued resilience of the country's labour market to the global economic slowdown of the past two years. The Office for National Statistics said the ILO measure of joblessness showed a drop of 1,000 in the three months to July to 1.493 million, giving an unchanged jobless rate of 5.1 percent. The claimant count measure, which only counts those drawing unemployment benefit, tumbled a bigger than expected 6,900 in August to 930,800, the lowest figure since September 1975. The ONS said that employment continued its seemingly inexorable rise, adding another 63,000 in the quarter to a new record high of 27.93 million.
The ONS said that over the past year, the primary jobs growth in Britain came in the public sector, in construction and in financial and business services while hard-pressed manufacturers had continued to shed tens of thousands of jobs. Other figures showed that bonus payments in the retail and financial services sectors pushed growth in average earnings up to 3.4 percent year-on-year in the three months to July. That was up from 3.1 percent the month before. That is still well inside the Bank of England's comfort zone of 4.5 percent earnings growth, however, and so will not spark fears of any inflationary pressure coming from the labour market.//www.reuetrs.com