Date Published: Tue, 17 Nov 2015

 Number of Persons in Employment  

• There was an annual increase in employment of 2.9% or 56,000 in the year to the third quarter of 2015, bringing total employment to 1,983,000.  

• On a seasonally adjusted basis, employment increased by 11,600 (+0.6%) over the previous quarter. This follows on from a seasonally adjusted increase in employment of 17,000 (+0.9%) in Q2 2015.

Number of Persons Unemployed  

• The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased from 9.6% to 9.1% over the quarter.  

• Unemployment decreased by 42,500 (-17.3%) in the year to Q3 2015 bringing the total number of persons unemployed to 203,000.  

• The long-term unemployment rate decreased from 6.4% to 5.0% over the year to Q3 2015. Long-term unemployment accounted for 54.1% of total unemployment in Q3 2015 compared with 56.7% a year earlier and 58.4% in the third quarter of 2013.

Labour Force 

• The total number of persons in the labour force in the third quarter of 2015 was 2,186,000, representing an increase of 13,500 (+0.6%) over the year. The number of persons not in the labour force in Q3 2015 was 1,427,300, an increase of 4,100 (+0.3%) over the year.

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