UK unemployment rate drops to 7.1%

[Flashman]

It may have gone down but the youth unemployment figures are at their highest since 1993 with nearly 950,000 unemployed and over 200,000 of those for more than a year.

Well they better just get used to being unemployed. Why bother hiring them when you can get a graduate from Bulgaria for £6.50 an hour?

[xoggoth]

too many UK manufacturing companies are nothing of the sort but but foreign own entities exporting as many profits as they're exports

That annoys me too. Between them, our unions with their strikes and Thatcher with her privatisations of effective organisations like the CEGB, buggered too much of our industry and left us without the expertise to do a lot of things, like build our own power stations or major railway lines. There have been some idiotic decisions of this government too, like handing a rail contract to a foreign company instead of one of ours to save a rather small amount. Provided we are not propping up inefficient companies with taxpayers' money I would like to see more protectionism. The French always did have more sense in that way.

No reason to be too pessimistic about the UK. Many small UK companies have started trading overseas. We may have at last grasped that we can never compete with third world countries on price of basic goods and started doing what we should be doing, concentrating on innovation and luxury products. Also, things elsewhere do not stay the same. China is become less competitive as living standards rise and the population ages. The Lancashire textile industry is growing again as in this link:

The company's business has grown 50% year-on-year since splitting production between Lancashire and China and it now has an annual turnover of around £20m - but it is now the UK side which is proving more productive.

"Due to inflation and rising labour costs in China, and exchange rate differences with the yuan, the Chinese plant is becoming less competitive than the British manufacturing plant," says Mr Caldeira.

"It is as cost-effective to make them here, so at the moment we're losing capacity in China, and gaining it here."

Mr Caldeira thinks that it is not only his company which is fighting the long-term trend of British manufacturers losing out to cheaper, emerging economies.

"The tide is starting to turn. There is a rebalancing that's starting," he said.

"Chinese costs are rising faster than British costs, so anyone who is fending off competition from the Far East is finding that it's getting easier."

BBC News - Lancashire leads new British textile manufacturing revival

[minestrone]

It may have gone down but the youth unemployment figures are at their highest since 1993 with nearly 950,000 unemployed and over 200,000 of those for more than a year.

It was over one million two years ago.

So a greater than 5% drop.

[darmstadt]

It was over one million two years ago.

So a greater than 5% drop.

You see thats a weird thing, one set of figures say that 2 years ago it was over a million, another says that its now at its highest and yet another says its gone down by 0.1%. What this says to me, is that everyone makes these things up as they go along so who can you trust?