The UK labour market delivered good news to George Osborne, as figures released on 15 June by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed unemployment fell in May and the unemployment rate was the lowest since October 2005.
According to the ONS, UK unemployment fell by 20,000 to 1.67m between February and April. The figure also represented a 148,000 decline from the corresponding period in the previous year and marked the lowest level of unemployed people since the period between March and May 2008.
The employment rate, which measures the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who were in work, stood at 74.2%, the joint highest since comparable records began in 1971.