Boris Johnson today admitted he has repeatedly used a false figure about jobs in Parliament.
The Prime Minister finally accepted a correction from the UK Statistics Authority, after he claimed over and over that more people are in jobs than before the pandemic - even after he was told it was wrong.
While people on payrolls are up since pre-Covid, the number of people in jobs overall is still down by 580,000 compared to December 2019-February 2020.
That is because the number of self-employed people who’ve quit more than outweigh the number joining payrolls.
Last month the Prime Minister once again claimed more people were in jobs than before the pandemic - weeks after the data watchdog told him it was untrue.
UKSA chair Sir David Norgrove bluntly said “it is wrong to claim that there are now more people in work than before the pandemic began”.
Sir David added: “If, as seems to be the case, your statement referred only to the increase in the number of people on payrolls, it would be a selective use of data that is likely to give a misleading impression of trends in the labour market unless that distinction is carefully explained.”
Now Boris Johnson has accepted he was talking about people on payrolls.
Asked by the Commons Liaison Committee if he accepted the UKSA's correction he said: “Yes I do.
“And that’s why I took particular care today, mindful as I am of Sir David’s chastisement on all occasions, I stressed it was payroll employment I was talking about.
“There were 400,000 more, there are now 600,000 more people on the payroll than they were before the pandemic began.
“That is not half bad when you consider what we were predicting - everybody was talking about 12% unemployment, I seem to recall.”
Mr Johnson insisted the unemployment rate - now 3.9% - was an improvement. In a surprise swipe at the Thatcher era, he told MPs: “People were slung out of their jobs and it was awful, in the 80s and the 90s, and we remember that.”
He added: “My overall picture I think is right - that the employment record of the government has been absolutely outstanding.”
But told he had given the wrong figure nine times he replied: “I think I took steps to correct the record earlier”.
It was not immediately apparent where he has done this.
He added: “I certainly have been very punctilious to talk about payroll employment.”
The PM said large numbers of people, possibly in their 50s, are deciding “they want to do something else” which could be a cause of the fall, and the government wanted to help them find work.
No10 had previously resisted saying the PM would correct the record over his claims.
