Unemployment Rises to 5.6%
Wednesday, August 12, 2015 at 10:19AM Click here for our Clash of the Titans page.
Q2 '15 Unemployment: 5.6%
Average Prediction: 5.7%
Number of Correct Forecasts: 72/462
Weakest Yen to Dollar Rate: 126 (7th Jun)
Competition Progress: 66.7% complete
The unemployment rate for the second quarter of the year was 5.6%; up slightly from the first quarter, when it was 5.5% (which at the time represented the smallest quarterly fall in almost two years). After a long period of extremely fast employment growth, it now looks as though the labour market is stabilising.
15% of our Clash of the Titans competition entrants correctly forecast this rate of unemployment, which was not far from the average prediction of 5.7%, and just under half of all forecasts were between 5.5% and 5.7%. However, more people thought it would be higher than lower than 5.6% at this stage, which should put the recent labour market gains into perspective as we start to talk about rises in unemployment.
Oxford's Kate Barker was the only one of our three Titans to correctly forecast a rate of 5.6% this quarter, and that helped to close the gap between her and the other two Titans. Both Michael McMahon and John Llewellyn thought it would be a touch higher, at 5.7%.
Click here for a summary of the results so far, or here for the full standings.