The government has been urged to tackle high levels of unemployment by enabling more people to enter self-employment.

The call comes from Peter Brooks, managing director at welfare-to-work provider Avanta.

Brook’s comments follow today’s figures released by the Office for National Statistics, which show UK unemployment fell by 17,000 in the three months to the end of February to 2.48m, while the rate of unemployment has fallen to 7.8%. The figures also reveal the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance rose by 700 in March to 1.45m.

Brooks told Recruiter: “There is no denying that the economy has taken a real hit, but the focus must be on recovery. A key part of the UK’s future economic recovery is in small businesses, and turning towards enterprise is becoming a more attractive prospect for many jobseekers, as the number of people competing for each vacancy increases, and will most likely continue to increase as the full effect of public sector spending cuts are felt.

“With the right support, self-employment can be a sustainable way to work around family commitments, management of a health condition or to just create your own job opportunity; and an increase in small businesses will bring real benefits to the community.”

Charles Logan, director at Hays, told Recruiter that the figures were “positive news”.

“Confidence from clients and candidates continues to improve, but we still need to see clients moving from replacing roles to creating new ones. The government needs to stay focused on creating an environment, which allows the private sector to thrive and create jobs, while supporting the public sector and those candidates who need to make the transition to the private sector.”

Carmen Watson, managing director of Pertemps Recruitment Partnership, says: “It’s re-assuring the unemployment figures fell this month, however youth unemployment still stands at 963,000 and this remains a great concern.

“Given Britain’s aging population, it is important that young people are placed into work early on, and employers should remain flexible and welcome them into the workplace through internships. It is important that that these young people end up with long-term, sustainable employment, otherwise we will see another sharp rise in unemployment figures in future months.”

Samantha O’Byrne, head of resourcing at Grant Thornton UK, says: “Youth unemployment rose by 0.1 point in the last quarter, albeit the figures show that if you remove people in full-time education the unemployment rate was down 0.6 points on the previous quarter. This group of people, who up until now would have been included in the full-time education statistics, will now have to find alternative ways of getting ahead and entering the job market.

“Internships can provide a valuable stepping stone into the job market for non-graduates and we have doubled the number of summer interns and 12-month placements we offer since last year to reflect this need.”

Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), says: “It’s clearly a good news week for the UK economy. The inflation rate is down, unemployment is down and pay pressure is down. However, while the jobs figures are apparently signalling green for go, they reflect an improvement in the labour market at the turn of the year and don’t tell us anything much about the road ahead.”

Tom Hadley, the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s director of policy and professional services, says: “Today’s figures must not mask the fact that our jobs market remains extremely fragile. However, the slight decrease in the number of unemployed is welcome news and fits with the latest REC/KPMG ‘Report on Jobs’.

“This showed vacancies rising to their highest rate since April last year and gave a first tentative sign that the private sector may be able to absorb public sector job losses.”