http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35111020

I guess we need to know exactly what constitutes as “unemployed” as far as these figures are concerned. My guess: people receiving JSA. This will not include those on workfare, various other “get back to work” schemes or those sanctioned. So the figures may be a little more optimistic. Also remember that the unemployed are encouraged to take on zero hours contract jobs, or become self employed. Again, getting them off the books, but not necessarily in full (or even part) time employment. The crucial thing here is that they won’t be receiving JSA any more.

This is a statistic. Taking an exact measure of all unemployment is entirely impossible, just as a precise count of GDP, poverty or inflation can also never be achieved.

What makes the stats for any of those things credible is that they are counted the same way month after month, and therefore a graph representing their change has some meaning.

Indeed. In the 1980s, during the Thatcher years, the way the unemployed were counted changed dramatically. I say that because the numbers obviously dipped (remember that unemployment was around 2-3 million then). It used to count anyone who was not working and in the system in some way (training, YTS, etc). The government changed it to count just those signing on and getting benefits. The unemployment numbers dropped, and it all looked better. However, the BBC angered the government because they added a qualifier to reporting the official figures. They used a phrase "unemployed and signing on" or "unemployed and receiving benefits" so that people knew the way the figures were calculated changed. The reality was that there were a lot of people suddenly not counted as unemployed despite being somewhere in the unemployment system because, crucially, they were not required to sign on while on various schemes. Like today, these people had no jobs and were receiving some kind of state aid as a result.

The other effect of all this was the the Job Centre (or Unemployment Benefit Office) and the DHSS staffing levels were reduced because of this lower figure.