LONDON, Dec 17 - Unemployment fell sharply again in Britain in the three months to October but growth in earnings remained steady, official data showed on Wednesday. The Office for National Statistics said that the Labour Force Survey measure of joblessness showed a drop of 33,000 in the three months to October to 1.47 million, or 5.0 percent of the workforce. The drop was the biggest since the second quarter of the year and shows the continuing strength of the British labour market, especially in comparison to the country's European neighbours. The 1.47 million was also the lowest total since the April to June period and is not far above the all-time low of 1.43 million seen during 2001.
There was also good news from the employment side as the number of Britons in work again set an all-time high of 28.17 million in the three months to October, a rise of 37,000 on the previous three months. Employment in Britain has been driven by a hiring binge by the public sector over the past two years as the government has pumped money into key public services and hired more doctors, nurses and teachers. That has more than compensated for tens of thousands of job cuts in the country's manufacturing sector. The claimant count measure of unemployment, which only counts those actually drawing benefit, showed its sixth monthly fall in a row, dropping 7,900 to 917,800, the lowest since September 1975. Under that measure, the jobless rate remained steady at 3.0 percent, the best since June 1975. In spite of the tightening of the country's labour market, growth in average earnings in the period remained steady at 3.6 percent year-on-year, well below the Bank of England's comfort level of 4.5 percent.//www..com