The districts with the highest and lowest unemployment rates are Worcester and Redditch (both 4.8%) and Bromsgrove (2.9%), whilst in terms of urban centres Kidderminster has the highest rate at 5.2%, twice the rate of the lowest (both Bewdley and Wythall at 2.6%). The male/female split is 7,115 (4.7%) men to 3614 (2.9%) women.
Whilst the increase of 63 over last month is quite small (most numbers are in low double figures except Wyre Forest with and increase of 79 counteracted by a fall of 33 in Bromsgrove), the increase over the same month a year ago is 493. Most of this is in Worcester (up 246, though with a drop of 2 compared with last month), and Wyre Forest (up 121 on the year).
All these figures come from the Worcestershire Economic Summary and whilst it is true that the numbers compare favourably, as they put it, with other parts of the region and country none the less there will be pockets in the county where the rates are much higher, as we have seen with youth unemployment that I have referred to in previous blogs. One way of comparing is to look at the interactive map for the council wards in Worcestershire. It is also possible by following the menus to go down to Local Super Output Areas. This shows significant differences between some of our urban areas of highest need and other parts of the County. It is also possible to compare across the region and country by constituency on the BBC website. And on the basis of these much wider areas Worcestershire does come out much more favourably compared with, say, Ladywood in Birmingham which has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 12.2%.
As well as the issue of Worcestershire County Council using different census data for population figures to arrive at the per-centage rates as compared with the ONS, so direct comparison is difficult, one must also take care over Job Seeker's Allowance claimants (approx. 1.6 million nationally) and the more widely used figures (2.68 million nationally) that are based on a survey of those looking for work. These latter figures are deemed a more reliable indicator of those out of work because there are many people who are not included in the JSA figures either because eligibility has been tightened over the years, perhaps because their personal or household income or finances rule them out, or because they are claiming another out of work benefit or, probably in a small number of cases, they choose not to claim. The difference between the two measures of unemployment has widened considerably over the last 20 years as the graph in a BBC article about the unemployment figures more generally shows. This makes the claim, in the County Economic Summary that I referred to above, that unemployment now at 10,729 JSA claimants is considerably lower than the peak in the last recession at 23,000 in February 1993 look like we are comparing apples and pears. I'm not sure if unemployment is as bad now as in the recessions of the 1980s and 90s but I think that relatively it is worse than the comparison above suggests.
Finally, a few words about vacancies. The number of vacancies in Worcestershire in December 2011 was 4,981, which is 12.3% higher than the previous month. Hopefully, this is good news, but I just want to take issue with a silly piece of journalism on the BBC Midlands Today programme on Wednesday (18 January) where they said there were 243,000 people unemployed in the West Midlands but there were 33,000 vacancies. They tried to run this as a story about skills shortages and there being jobs out there that people weren't taking. Undoubtedly, there may be shortages of people for some very specific jobs and there will be some jobs that many people won't want to do either because of the pay or the conditions (and this might be why some of them are filled by migrant workers). But self-evidently, not every vacancy is going to be filled all the time because there is a time lag in filling jobs. Even at the height of the boom there would have been vacancies waiting to be filled. It is also the case that the figure quoted is only for vacancies notified to JobCentre Plus. Many employers choose to use other private employment agencies or to advertise in the press or on the internet, wherever they judge is the best market-place for those types of employee they are seeking. For example, by and large, managerial and professional vacancies are not advertised at the Job Centre.
All this illustrates that the jobs market, both of vacancies and for those who are unemployed is a constantly moving situation. There are unfortunately, a significant number who have been unemployed more than six months (37% of the total) and 12 months (15% of the total) in Worcestershire, but the number of those unemployed quoted each month is a changing population as people move into and out of unemployment, and likewise, vacancies become available and are filled, some more quickly than others.
However, in all this analysis of statistics, let us not forget the people who are affected. I will always recall, as I may have mentioned before, saying to the District Manager of JobCentre that unemployment is thankfully low in Worcestershire, to which she replied that it was still a disaster for each individual affected.
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