Corrected headline and intro
The UK unemployment rate rose slightly in the three months to April, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday.
The jobless rate rose slightly to 3.8 percent in the three months to April from 3.7 percent in the three months to March. The rate was forecast to fall to 3.6 percent.
At the same time, the employment rate came in at 75.6 percent, which was still below pre-coronavirus pandemic levels.
In three months to May, the number of job vacancies rose to a new record of 1,300,000. However, the ONS said the rate of growth in vacancies continued to slow down.
Average earnings including bonuses rose 6.8 percent in three months to April from the last year, slower than the economists' forecast of 7.6 percent.
At the same time, excluding bonuses, average earnings gained 4.2 percent versus the expected growth of 4.0 percent.
In May, the number of claimant count decreased 19,700 from April. Economists had forecast claimant count to fall sharply by 49,400. The claimant count dropped marginally to 4.0 percent from 4.1 percent in April.
Payrolled employees in May showed a monthly increase of 90,000 on the revised April 2022, to a record 29.6 million.
The tentative evidence that the recent weakening in economic activity is filtering through into a slightly looser labor market may push the Bank of England a little closer to raising interest rates by 25 basis points on Thursday rather than by 50 basis points, Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, said.
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