The Tories received a timely pre-election boost today with news that unemployment had fallen to its lowest level for almost seven years.
Figures showing the jobless total falling by by 76,000 to 1.84 million in the last quarter came after George Osborne found his fiscal policies receiving unexpectedly warm praise from both the head of the IMF and the finance minister of Germany.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance fell by 20,700 in March to 772,400, the 29th consecutive monthly cut.
Other data showed that more than 31 million people were in work after an increase of more than half a million in the past year, the biggest total since records began in 1971. The UK’s