Unemployment finally decreasing

29th Jan 2010

DATA pub­lished on 20th Jan­u­ary has shown that unem­ploy­ment lev­els in the region have fallen by almost 10 per cent.

The fig­ure has gone from 20,000 to 259,000, how­ever the num­ber of unem­ployed peo­ple remains over 500,000 higher than this time last year.

Infor­ma­tion on employ­ment lev­els is pub­lished monthly by the office for national sta­tis­tics and this new data has been welcomed.

Yvette Cooper, Work and Pen­sion Sec­re­tary said: ‘The jobs mar­ket is still tough for a lot of peo­ple, but the drop in unem­ploy­ment and youth unem­ploy­ment is very welcome.’

Birm­ing­ham, how­ever, still has amongst the high­est pro­por­tion of peo­ple claim­ing job seek­ers allowance in the region. 7.9 per cent of Birm­ing­ham res­i­dents are on this ben­e­fit com­pared to only 2.2 per cent in Stratford-on-Avon and the amount is only sur­passed in Wolver­hamp­ton with 8.2 per cent.

The West Midland’s fig­ures are only exceeded by the North East in the num­ber of job seek­ers and con­sid­er­ing the national aver­age is 4.1% this remains very high. Whilst the youth, 18–24, claimant rate is even more wor­ry­ing; it is the high­est in the coun­try with 54,000 young peo­ple claim­ing, which is just over one in ten.

There is also the worry that long-term unem­ploy­ment, clas­si­fied as unem­ploy­ment for over one year, has increased by 29,000 to 631,000, the high­est level since 1997.

The mes­sage appears to be that improve­ments are being made but it will be a long process before employ­ment fig­ures get com­pletely back on track.