He said: "The Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast unemployment rate is the same as it was last autumn.
"They expect it to peak this year at 8.7% before falling each year to 6.3% by the end of the forecast period.
"But they have revised down their estimate of the claimant count, which they now expect to be around 100,000 lower in each of the next four years than they previously forecast – peaking at 1.67 million this year, rather than the 1.8 million they forecast in November.
"And they forecast one million more jobs in the economy over five years."
Paul Flynn, MD of recruitment firm Earthstaff, said: "We welcome plans for job creation in today's budget. The government has a huge opportunity in the form of the energy sector, where the boom in renewable and traditional energy projects across Europe has meant firms are crying out for talented people. However, more effort needs to be made to promote engineering as a viable career to the UK's younger generations. We need to raise the identity of engineering and ensure that its importance and credibility cascades down to grass-roots level, so that when a child starts school, instead of wanting to be like Alan Sugar, they are talking about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sir James Dyson and James Watt.
