Employment - a look behind the headlines

Yesterday brought some good news on the employment front, as reported by BBC News "The number of people out of work in the UK has fallen to its lowest total for more than a year."

But if you look behind the figures things don't seem that good - take the change in employment over one year in percentage terms:  In employment an increase of 1.8% (513) - of which number of employees rose by 1.3% (319); number of self employed rose by 2.7% (112); number of unpaid family members rose by 4.6% (5) and number in government supported training & employment programmes rose by 86.6% (77). (figures in brackets are in thousands)

And of those, over a year, there was an increase 0.9% (197) in full time employment and an increase of 4% (316) in part time employment. Which can be split further down as follows:

EFT Employed full time - EPT Employed part time, SFT self employed full time - SPT self employed part time. 

Another worrying trend is the increase in number unemployed for more than 12 months:

Finally, regional change in employment since July to September 2011:

and changes in unemployed:

Data from ONS Labour Market Statistics, November 2012