The unemployment figures give a unique picture of the state of Britain's economy - all thanks to the Office for National Statistics.

Today it was reported that unemployment is up 0.2% on the last quarter and employment is down 0.3% on the last quater.

However, while all the attention focuses on the headline data, the full release from the ONS includes a wealth of other information. Here is our pick of the best.

1. Unemployment is going up

Unemployment always goes up after a recession - and while small percentage changes in employment figures don't seem very dramatic, what it means in terms of the number of people is that 49,000 people have become unemployed over the last quarter. This leaves a total of 2.50m people unemployed in the country as a whole. There were 157,000 redundancies made in the last three months, that is 14,000 more redundancies than in the last quarter.

2. The salaries for those with a job have gone up

The average annual earnings is up 2.3% on the last quarter. If bonuses are included the average earnings have increased by 2.1%. Interestingly the pay and benefit increase for public sector workers is greater, on average, than private sector workers.

3. Public sector pay on average is greater than private sector

The average weekly earnings for a private sector worker, including bonuses, for November 2010 was £449, this was an increase of £1.9% on a year earlier. The average weekly public sector salary was £469, that figure includes bonuses, and is a 2.4% increase on a year earlier.

4. There are fewer public sector jobs

The latest figures show that there are 77,000 less jobs in the public sector than last year. This comes after two years of rises which have kept unemployment numbers steady. Nationalising large financial institutions, growths in education and health have all played a major part. The latest figures, however, show every public employment falling in every industry compared to last year - apart from the education sector, which has grown by 20,000 people in the last year.

5. The number of people working part-time has decreased

The number of people working part-time has decreased by -0.7 on the previous quarter, which means 44,000 people changed from their part-time work.

6. Northern Ireland is badly affected by unemployment

The year on year increase in claimant count is greatest in Northern Ireland, where Newry & Armagh has increased by 18% in December 2010 compared to December 2009 and North Down followed closely behind with 14.9%. Belfast East rose by 14.1% and Belfast South by 12.5%.

7. Youth unemployment is going down - slightly

Or rather, it is for 18 to 24 year olds - there were 19,000 less people in that age group unemployed (707,000), compared to the first three months of the year. But for 16-17 year olds, unemployment is higher - 216,000 of them were unemployed, up 13,000 on the beginning of the year. 10% of them were unemployed for more than a year

8. Birmingham has the highest rates of jobseeker claimants in the country

The data shows the UK's worst unemployment blackspots are Birmingham. In Birmingham Ladywood, the total claimants is 8,094, Birmingham Hodge Hill has second highest rate of unemployment claims, Birmingham Erdington fourth and Wolverhampton South East comes in at eight for December 2010.

The highest percentage of men claiming unemployment benefit is in Birmingham with a 15.0% in Ladywood and 13.7% in Hodge Hill. The highest percentage of women claiming unemployment is also in Birmingham Ladywood with 6.0% but is closely followed by the Hackney South and Shoreditch at 5.4%.

9. Male unemployment is greater than female

There are 1.48 m unemployed men in the UK, this is up 43,000 in the last three months. There are 1.02 m unemployed females in the UK, this is up 6,000 in the last three months.

10. The number of vacancies increased - slightly

The number of job vacancies in this last quarter is 480,000, this amounts to 1.8 vacancies per 100 employees. This is an increase of 18,000 vacancies or 0.1% on the third quarter.



DATA: download the latest datasheet by constituency as a spreadsheet

INTERACTIVE: The benefit map of Britain

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