{"id":636368,"date":"2025-12-16T16:52:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/636368\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T16:52:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:52:19","slug":"britains-unemployment-rises-xinhua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/636368\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain’s unemployment rises-Xinhua"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cruise ship passes under London Bridge at sunset in London, Britain, Aug. 2, 2025. (Photo by Wang Muhan\/Xinhua)<\/p>\n

The figure rose by 0.4 percentage points from the May-July period, according to the ONS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

LONDON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) — Britain’s unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over was estimated at 5.1 percent in the August-October period, rising further amid sluggish labor market conditions, data released Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed.<\/p>\n

The figure rose by 0.4 percentage points from the May-July period, according to the ONS.<\/p>\n

Annual growth in employees’ average total earnings, including bonuses, stood at 4.7 percent in August-October. In real terms, adjusted for consumer price index (CPI) inflation, earnings grew by 1 percent, the data showed.<\/p>\n

The number of payrolled employees fell by 0.5 percent between October 2024 and October 2025, and declined by 0.1 percent between September and October 2025.<\/p>\n

Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said the overall picture continued to point to a weakening labor market. “The number of employees on payroll has fallen again, reflecting subdued hiring activity, while firms told us there were fewer jobs in the latest period,” she said.<\/p>\n

Commuters are seen at Baker Street station in London, Britain, on May 12, 2025. (Photo by Stephen Chung\/Xinhua)<\/p>\n

Jane Gratton, deputy director of public policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said Tuesday’s data reflected that businesses were “less confident about hiring staff due to sky-high employment costs and a tidal wave of new employment legislation coming down the track.”<\/p>\n

Noting that 72 percent of businesses surveyed by the BCC said labor costs were the biggest cost pressure they faced, Gratton said there was a limit to how much additional cost firms could absorb without affecting investment and growth. She called for “a laser-like focus on stimulating growth and boosting investment, trade, innovation and skills” to make 2026 “a year of delivery.” \u25a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cruise ship passes under London Bridge at sunset in London, Britain, Aug. 2, 2025. (Photo by Wang…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,33822,1144,712,16,16919,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-636368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-labor-market","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-unemployment-rate","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115730288927537337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}