{"id":651873,"date":"2026-10-20T07:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T07:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/651873\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T07:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T07:50:20","slug":"surprise-drop-in-uk-unemployment-to-4-7-uk-unemployment-and-employment-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/651873\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise drop in UK unemployment to 4.7% | UK unemployment and employment statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Unemployment in the UK fell unexpectedly in the three months to August, to 4.7% from 4.9%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The Office for National Statistics figures, which provide a backdrop to the budget on 28 October, also showed that the number of payrolled employees rose by 13,000 between August and September, to 30.3m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">However, the number of job vacancies fell by 21,000 to 691,000 in the three months to September, the lowest since 2021 during the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Economists had expected the unemployment rate to rise to 5%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Average wage growth, including bonuses, has fallen to 3.7% from 3.9%. Stripping out bonuses, average pay growth rose to 3.7% from 3.6%.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"#EmailSignup-skip-link-5\" class=\"dcr-76akua\">skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Every weekday<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-vf9hps\">Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-djbwnz\">Get set for the working day \u2013 we&#8217;ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792482620_163_500.jpg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"dcr-gx9601\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"EmailSignup-skip-link-5\" tabindex=\"0\" aria-label=\"after newsletter promotion\" role=\"note\" class=\"dcr-76akua\">after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Average pay growth remains above the 3.1% headline rate of inflation, which is of concern to Bank of England interest rate setters, who fear higher-than-expected inflation will translate into higher wage awards, fuelling future prices rises recorded by the consumer prices index (CPI).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unemployment in the UK fell unexpectedly in the three months to August, to 4.7% from 4.9%. The Office&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-651873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}