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12 September 2012 10:35
The latest official employment data will come under scrutiny later today, in the wake of surprisingly positive results in recent times.
Despite the economic challenges faced by the UK, recent employment trends have consistently beat expectations, with last month's figures from the Office for National Statistics showing unemployment falling to its lowest level for a year after a big jump in the number of people in work.
It is thought the Olympic Games were a major driver as most of the quarterly fall in unemployment was recorded in London.
Economists believe that some of the Olympics-related hiring will start to drop out in today's report, although unemployment is still expected to drop.
The overall trend remains surprisingly positive and there are suspicions over the figures, which come against a grim economic background in the UK.
Philip Shaw at Investec said that while jobs market trends are "remarkable", there were two possible reasons why unemployment is not rising: self-employment has increased by 218,000 over the past year and firms are keeping hold of staff, albeit by offering more modest pay increases.
