Unemployment in Worcesershire - November 2011

Against this week's gloomy news about unemployment Worcestershire offers a small bright spot insofar as the claimant count has fallen by 177 compared with last month to 10,666. Having said that, the claimant count was up only slightly nationally, compared with the more widely used labour force survey figure that showed an increase of 128,000 to 2.64m. And when one compares the figures with a year ago the claimant count in Worcestershire has increased by 395 with the biggest increase by far being in Worcester at 207 higher. There is insufficient information to be able to point to a cause such as the large number of public sector jobs in the city and, of course, the County Council, for example, employ many people across the county and not just at County Hall. Although not quoted in the figures from the monthly County Economic Summary I heard a figure of 6.5% quoted in the media as the level of unemployment in the county on the more widely used basis as compared with their county claimant level of 3.8%.
 

More generally, whilst the claimant count isn't broken down by industry, it is possible to get an indirect indication of occupations where unemployment has increased. The greatest increase in claimants since November 2010 has been in Sales and Customer Service occupations (565 and 32.2%). The largest decrease has been in Process, plant and machine operatives (205 and 16.1%). As in previous months, the three urban districts in the county have claimant count rates in excess of 4% as compared with the rural districts that are around 3%.
 

The number of vacancies at JobCentres has fallen compared with last month, perhaps reflecting the decrease in unemployment, but this is a seasonal trend with the same kind of fall in vacancies 12 months ago. Rather strangely, the largest proportion of vacancies is in the category real estate, renting and business activities at 2,953 out of 4,532 or 65.2%. Quite what the business activities are in not clear but they must surely account for most of the vacancies rather than real estate and renting - there can't be that many new letting agencies! It is interesting to look at the destinations of those who leave the claimant count, with the largest number (1,095 out of a total of 2360) reassuringly being because they have found work, but nearly as many are because they failed to sign (685) and 'not known' (260). All the other categories are in double figures or less.
 

The trend in long-term unemployment is going up again with the proportion of claimants in the county who have been in receipt of benefit for more than six months having increased by 0.1 % to 37.3% between October and November 2011 and the proportion in receipt of benefit for more than 12 months increasing by 1.5% between September and October 2011 to 14.7%.

Youth unemployment has thankfully fallen by 0.3% since last month to 7.5% but is still 0.5% higher than this time last year. The ward with the highest figures is again Oldington and Foley Park in Kidderminster which has gone up by 1% since last month and 1.9% since November 2010. All of the wards in the county on the 'top 10' have a rate of 12.3% or higher with Gorse Hill, which I have an interest in through the Tolladine Project in my 'home' parish third (behind Ripple with 10 out of 64 young people out of work making an unusual entry). There are then three Redditch wards, Church Hill, Greenlands and Abbey. Harvington and Norton, which is in Wychavon's rural 'area of highest need' project area and Great Hampton, also in Wychavon, both appear for the first time, probably due to relatively small numbers affecting percentages. This may be telling us something about the changing spread of young people's unemployment, or may be a statistical blip. With my rural hat on, I will keep an eye on this.


So far against the gloomy national and wider West Midlands (where the figures went up) backdrop, Worcestershire continues to fare reasonably well.  But the worrying outlook for coming months, and some of the darker predictions, suggests we need to keep a careful watch on the human effects that the statistics point to.  Will there be anything we and the Church more generally, might do to ameliorate the human cost?