UK employment is now at its highest level in history

The UK just got some slightly disappointing economic data - wages aren't growing as quickly as people hoped (they're up 1.8% in the last year) and the unemployment rate didn't fall from 5.7% in February as analysts expected.

But by at least one measure, the UK is doing fantastically well.The UK employment rate has never been so high, as far back as comparable records go (to 1971).

Here's how it looks:

Business Insider

That's a pretty amazing thing, especially given that it's likely unemployment will keep falling further.

It doesn't mean that everything's right with the UK labour force - there's a huge number of self-employed workers with relatively low incomes coming into the market - but generally it's a very impressive achievement for the UK economy, which only recently returned to its pre-2008 crash size.