Different measures of the labour market stats get reported and focused on which gets confusing.

eg "more people in employment now than ever before" - yes because the population/labour force is growing
"unemployment rate has fallen" - check whether the inactivity rate has risen before celebrating

There are three labour market statuses: employed, unemployed and inactive. Unemployed means you want a job and are looking and can't find one. If you want full time work and can only find part time work you are employed but a subcategory within that called 'underemployed'. Inactive means you aren't participating in the labour market - retired, in education, or just not looking for work for whatever reason (eg on disability benefits).

When you hear cynics saying "the government wants to put young people in to education because that gets them off the unemployed figures" they mean they are moving people from unemployed to inactive, so yes that does make the unemployment rate look lower. Also if people give up searching for jobs because they think there's no point....they also come off the unemployment figures, and go to inactive, which makes the unemployment rate look better!

IMO the best guide to how the labour market is performing is the employment rate for the working age (16 to 64) people. This excludes the 65s and over and is saying what proportion of your working age population is actually working.

In the early 1990s the employment rate was around 68 to 69 per cent and then it started to creep up during the mid 90s. When Labour took office in May 1997 it was 70.9 per cent. It continued to rise at this point, reacted 72 per cent in 1999, 73 per cent in 2004 and hovered around the 73 per cent mark for the next four years.

The last time it was 73 per cent was in May 2008. At the point the Coalition took office it was 70.4 per cent. It then pretty much flatlined and bottomed out in Sept 2011 at 70.2 per cent. But one thing to be said for the UK labour market's response to the most recent recession, was things weren't nearly as bad for employment as they could have been given the depth of the recession, the labour market is more resilient now than it was in the early 80s or early 90s recessions under Thatcher/Major.

In the past two years things have improved, and the latest figures are 72 per cent. So we're back to around where we were at the start of 2009 in the early part of the recession, or to where we were in 1999 when we were on the up.

However there has been an increase in the proportion of part-time working in that employment rate. Between 1995 and 2009 the proportion of the workforce that was part-time was about 25 per cent. Since 2010 it has been around 27 per cent.

Part-time working is ok for people that want to be part-time, but the underemployment rate (ie proportion of those that are employed that are working part-time but want to work full-time) has also crept up. This had been about 3 per cent in the mid 1990s and fell to below 2 per cent in the mid 2000s. It was 3.7 per cent when the Coalition took office and is now 4.9 per cent.

Top post from Sally. Explains it clearly and simply, and much better than I can usually manage.

Speaking of recovery, I see that Cameron and Osborne's much vaunted "export-lead" recovery has somewhat stalled. The UK's current account balance with the rest of the world is now £20.7 billion (5.1% of GDP), its highest since 1989. So it seems another soundbite has failed. No wonder they keep deleting everything they have said. I also assume that's why economic policy now seems to consist of trying to create an lending - housing market bubble again?

Moveable targets and vague threats of much deeper cuts in the second term, but not now, for the next fifteen to eighteen months expect a consumer lending frenzy, the exact opposite of what they have been preaching these past three years principally because nothing else works and they need to give themselves twelve clear months of good times and positive sound bites prior to an election.

But its ok because the public will swallow whatever they are fed, as we often see on here.

Have they run out of lead?

Yes two concerning pieces of news today to counter the encouraging growth figures:

- highest trade deficit since 1989 (5.1 per cent of GDP)
- new record level of public sector net debt (76.6 per cent of GDP) and borrowing for this year set to overshoot the forecast by £1bn

It is in pretty bad taste when you get jubiliant Tory politicians and media commentators saying the data "proves they have won the argument" and saying that Ed Balls must feel pretty silly now etc.

Yes we have got (still below trend) growth back but we had much better growth during Labour's time in office so this is nothing to shout about.

Ah but of course, the usual Tory response goes, Labour got growth just financed by borrowing and consumer spending, the country needs rebalancing towards exports and investment. Well the moderate growth we have got now is exactly the same - based on borrowing and consumer spending. So if this is winning the argument....yes Labour won that argument a decade ago, you can get growth through borrowing and consumer spending....well done.

The 2.62 millions came from that left-wing rag The Evening Standard

The London Evening Standard?

The jobless total dropped 99,000 to 2.39 million, a rate of 7.4 per cent, in the three months to October — and the number of people in work rose above 30 million for the first time on record. '"

I remember the unemployment figures being "massaged" under that womans tyrannical time.
What they did was make claiming unemployment benefit more difficult along with other associated benefits.(sound familiar?)

Then, as was always spouted via the media "the number of unemployed, AND CLAIMING BENEFITS has gone down again" thus proving that governments assertion that they had policies that benefited everyone and that people were in work.
As usual with a tory government, it was a con trick, unemployment reached levels that were morally unacceptable and created generations of unemployable people. Money flooded out of the country to tax havens quicker than you could say boo and businesses were fighting each other to see which 3rd world sweat shops could produce their product at a fraction of the cost whilst still charging the consumer top whack and creating even bigger profit margins for the few.

It is unlikely though that such a situation would ever occur again, isnt it

Then perhaps they're not worse off under this government, unless you know more about their own personal circumstances than they themselves do.

Today, it's 'underemployment is a price worth paying because the only important thing is that they're not on the unemployed figures'.

Well, we have had Sal Paradise telling us that he hasn't had a pay rise in three years – so he will certainly be worse off.

His response, unfortunately, is that nobody else should have one if he can't – certainly not those nasty nurses and teachers, what with their gold-plated pensions, and those homecare workers with their massive expense accounts.

Whoa - I ask again for you to read what is written not what you want it to say. I have never said that because I haven't had a pay rise that nobody else should get one. If I have please show me where - otherwise show some class and retract the statement i.e. admit you where wrong.

So the second paragraph is just a figment of your warped imagination. As I has said before you sometimes behave like a child who doesn't get her own way - petty and immature, IMO you have a lot of growing up to do - being surrounded by the chattering classes on here does you no favours. No doubt Him, Mr Fish etc will jump to your defence security in numbers or perceived gravitas by association.

Not necessarily, if he/she has altered his/her outgoings. The crash (the only one, the one caused by the Labour party 5.18798828125:5