Unemployment in Britain fell again in July as the British labour market stayed resilient amid the global economic slowdown.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) 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 per cent.
The ONS said that over the past year, 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 bonus payments in the retail and financial services sectors pushed growth in average earnings up to 3.4 per cent year-on-year in the three months to July. That was up from 3.1 per cent the month before.
That is still well inside the Bank of England's comfort zone of 4.5 per cent earnings growth, however, and so will not spark fears of any inflationary pressure coming from the labour market.