New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that our long-term economic plan is working with more than two million jobs created in the private sector since the election.
These strong jobs numbers are a clear sign that our long-term economic plan is working, building a stronger more competitive economy: the number of people in work has reached a new record high, unemployment is down, and youth unemployment is continuing to fall.
Up and down the country businesses are feeling increasingly confident about creating jobs, meaning thousands more people each day are getting the security of work. Each new job means another family more financially secure, with the prospect of a better and brighter future.
We know that these remain difficult times for families, who are still feeling the impact of the Great Recession, but, as the IMF confirmed last week, the foundations for a broad based recovery are now in place. The only way to get living standards up is to build on these foundations and keep growing the economy and creating more jobs. The biggest risk to families' economic security would be abandoning our long-term economic plan that is delivering this.
On Labour: Labour left nearly half a million more people without a job and Ed Miliband predicted that our economic plan would 'lead to the disappearance of a million jobs'.
But there are now more than 1.6 million more people in work and unemployment is down 329,000 on the election. Labour's wild predictions about our economic plan have been exposed for the short-term politicking that they always were.
Labour don't have a long-term plan to secure Britain's future - all they care about is their own short-term self-interest - and hardworking people would be worse off as a result.
Key statistics
- Employment: 30.5 million (up 345,000 this quarter and up 1.69 million since the election).
- Employment rate: 72.9 per cent (up 0.6 points this quarter and up 2.6 points since the election).
- Unemployment: 2.16 million (down 161,000 this quarter and down 329,000 since the election).
- Unemployment rate: 6.6 per cent (down 0.5 points this quarter and down 1.3 points since the election).
- Claimant count: 1.09 million in May (down 27,400 on April and down 408,800 since the election).
- Total weekly pay: in February to April 2014 this was up by 0.7 per cent over the year.
Other useful statistics: including full-time jobs, youth unemployment and long-term unemployment
- Private sector employment has risen by more than two million since the election.
- 1.3 million of the jobs created since the election have been full-time - over three-quarters of the rise in employment.
- The proportion of women in work hit 67.9 per cent - the highest since records began.
- Long-term unemployment is down 37,000 over the last three months, and down 108,000 on the year.
- The number of unemployed young people fell by 59,000 over the last three months, and is down by 91,000 since the election.
- The fall in the claimant count is the largest annual fall in sixteen years.