UK unemployment rate holds steady

(Sharecast News) - The amount of people out of work remained unchanged in October, official data suggested on Tuesday, while wage growth cooled. According to the latest provisional data from the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate was largely unchanged in the three months to October, at 4.2%. Also largely unchanged was the economic inactivity rate, at 20.9%.

Annual growth in total pay was 7.2%, or 7.3% once bonuses were stripped out. That compares to last month's growth of 7.7% and was a smaller increase than analysts had been expecting, with consensus for 7.5% growth in regular pay.

Once adjusted for inflation, annual total pay rose by 1.3% and regular pay by 1.4%.

The number of vacancies, meanwhile, fell by 45,000 in September to 949,000 in the September to November period.

It is the seventeenth consecutive period that vacancies have fallen, making it the longest unbroken run of quarterly falls ever recorded.

A total of 30.2m people were payrolled employees in November, down 13,000 on October's revised figure.