Unemployment falls by 51,000

The City Tracker maps the city-by-city breakdown of today's Jobseeker's Allowance claimant count and Jobcentre Plus vacancy figures so you can find out if your region has been hit hard by the recession or if it's weathering the storm.

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• Unemployment

Liam Byrne, Shadow Secretary for Work and Pensions, said the real concern he had from the unemployment figures is that "there are now very clear signs of lasting and long term damage that's come from the Government's failure to get people back to work fast enough".

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• Liam Byrne
• Unemployment

The reality is that many people are suffering as a result of stagnant growth and the brutal public sector cuts, and the Government needs to wake up to this and take action if we are to see any true signs of recovery.

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• unemployment

A video from the Office for National Statistics shows the latest on the UK labour market.

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• unemployment

Unemployment of 2.61 million five years into recession is unacceptable, unnecessary and an unforgivable waste of human talents.

Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Cable must conclude that Plan A to reduce the deficit to restore growth is not working and has stalled the recovery.

We need an emergency budget to reflate the economy, to restore demand, which will get people back to work and reduce the deficit.

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• unemployment

Today's figures show some long overdue good news in the labour market. New full-time jobs have been created and employment is up while unemployment has fallen.

However, there are still real concerns about this being a sustainable recovery. Long-term youth unemployment has risen yet again, the claimant count is still going up and while male unemployment fell by 52,000 in the quarter, the number of unemployed women only fell by 3,000.

We now need to turn today's positive news into a steady fall in unemployment. The Government must invest in jobs to get the economy growing again."

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• Unemployment

Any fall in unemployment is very welcome but I remain cautious over the next few months, given the continuing economic challenges we face.

There are more jobs available in the economy with vacancies at 465,000, up 7,000 on this time last year.

The number of people employed in the private sector is up 205,000 on the quarter, more than offsetting a 39,000 fall in public sector employment. The total number of people working full-time has also increased by 82,000.

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• Unemployment

There are 465,000 job vacancies within the UK and there are around 5.7 people unemployed in relation to each vacancy, the Office for National Statistics said.

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• Unemployment

The unemployment of 2.61 million people is "unacceptable, unnecessary and unforgivable," the GMB union said.

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• Unemployment