The Office for National Statistics has today said there was a total of 2.543m workers employed in manufacturing jobs during the quarter, down 0.4% on the preceding quarter and down 1.1% year-on-year.

Across the UK, the unemployment level fell by 88,000 to reach 2.43m, in the largest quarterly fall in unemployment since the three months to August 2000.

Even so, employment in the UK's manufacturing industries, including print, has been on a downward trend for decades and more than a third of manufacturing jobs have been lost since March 2001.

Last week, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said that SMEs were being held back from employing new staff by national insurance contributions (NICs).

Michael Moradian, owner of Print Express London, said that the unemployment figures showed that there had been some growth in the private sector.

"This means the unemployment figures are lower, and so it seems that the FSB is not correct, and that SMEs are employing new staff."

Terrye Teverson, chairman of KCS Print, said that cutting back on NICs was clearly a good incentive to help companies take on more staff, which would in turn benefit the government by cutting the number of people on benefit.

"The people in work would end up paying tax and so benefit the government. There would be renewed and much-needed confidence in the country which would boost the retail sector," she said.

She added that there should be more emphasis on workplace apprenticeships with real incentives for the employer. 

"The government should be cutting the tax on jobs by giving all employers an NIC holiday.
"It would cost the Treasury, but they would make more savings by getting people off the unemployment register."