The FSB recently welcomed the news that unemployed dropped by 88,000 and that a similar number of people entered the workplace.
The vice-chairman of the Federation’s Peterborough branch, Amir Butt, said the increase in employment was good news but it is now important to continue the trend and encourage entrepreneurs to set up businesses and offer small firms incentives to increase their workforce.
Small businesses want to hire more staff and they would be willing to do so if only the government would reduce payroll costs. The coalition must put an extension of the National Insurance contributions holiday at the heart of its growth plans in order to continue reducing unemployment.
Chris Grayling, the employment minister, says more work still needs to be done. The latest figures are encouraging and its good news that employment is increasing. Compared to this time last year, there are now an additional half a million people working in the private sector, he pointed out.
He went on to say that unemployment among young people is now lower than when the coalition took up office.
The ONS data shows that public sector employment decreased by 24,000 in quarter one 2011. Local government departments shed 27,000 jobs whilst central government actually increased its workforce by 4,000. However, when you remove the temporary staff who worked on the 2011 census from the equation, public sector employment fell by 39,000 to 6.14 million.
According to the ONS report, regular salaries, excluding bonuses, have risen by 2% in the past 12 months, whilst total pay, including bonuses, rose by 1.8%.
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Image: look downstairs into stairwell whirl by quapan
