Key Economic Statistics, January 2009

The bulletin includes latest information from a range of sources and covers a variety of time periods. This bulletin updates the statistics previously released on 19 December 2008.

The key points from the latest release are:

The Labour Force Survey estimates for the 3 months to November 2008 show:

• The employment rate of people of working age in Wales was 70.8 per cent, down from 72.4 per cent in the same period a year earlier.  The UK average was 74.2 per cent.
• The ILO unemployment rate in Wales was 6.8 per cent of the economically active, up from 5.1 per cent in the same period a year earlier.  For the UK as a whole it was 6.1 per cent.
• The rate of economic activity amongst people of working age in Wales was 76.2 per cent, down from 76.4 per cent in the same period a year earlier.  The UK average was 79.2 per cent.

The Short Term Employment Surveys for the quarter ending September 2008 estimate that:

• Employee jobs in Wales fell by 20,000 (1.7 per cent) over the year to stand at 1.149 million.  UK employee jobs fell by 0.1 per cent over the same period to stand at 27.1 million.
• Employee jobs in manufacturing in Wales fell by 5,000 (3.3 per cent) over the year. Over the same period there were falls across most industries, the largest being in construction (down 9,000 or 15.0 per cent). There was an increase in education, health, public admin and other services (up 2,000 or 0.5 per cent).

The claimant count rate in December 2008 for Wales was 4.2 per cent of the workforce, up 1.5 percentage points on December 2007 (UK rate 3.6 per cent).

The claimant count rate in December 2008 for West Wales and the Valleys was 3.5 per cent of the resident population of working-age.  The rate for East Wales stood at 3.0 per cent.

The Index of Production for the four quarters to quarter 3 2008 for Wales rose by 4.7 per cent compared with the same period a year ago. The UK index fell by 0.5 per cent over the same period.

The detailed quarterly Labour Force Survey datasets on StatsWales (external link* were updated to include the new labour market information on 23 January 2009.

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5017
E-mail: economic.stats@wales.gsi.gov.uk

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13 February 2009