Unemployment in September 2012

Overall Picture

Unemployment fell slightly in Worcestershire last month from 10,637 to 10,468, a drop of 169 claimants, though the change is small enough for the percentage to remain unchanged on the ONS system of calculation at 3.0%.  (On the County Council’s basis, which I have previously used in these briefings the rate has fallen from 3.8 to 3.7%).  Using the ONS figure should hopefully aid more accurate comparison with regional and national figures with the health warning that the more widely quoted regional and national figures are the people available for work, not the claimant count which is used here.

Regional and National Position

This small decrease is consistent with a further modest fall nationally, though according to news broadcasts, the West Midlands region again showed a slight increase in the headline figure but a very small fall in the claimant count (down 1,274 to 163,392 and 6.6%).  There is more information about the national picture here and a further discussion of why unemployment appears to be fallingand the total number of people employed is rising even though we have been in a double dip recession.  It seems to revolve around a number of people working part-time who would rather work full-time, some who are self-employed or contractors who may be classed as full-time but are not actually working that many hours, though the notion of labour-hoarding by employers is now dismissed as they couldn’t afford to keep this up for so long.  Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, also writes about why unemployment hasn’t been ashigh in this recession as in previous ones – because many of us have taken wage cuts and the afore-mentioned reduced hours so the pain has been spread more widely rather than on a smaller number who have lost their jobs.

Local Figures

The total number claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance has fallen by 792 since the same month last year with the largest falls in Redditch (274), Worcester (184) and Malvern Hills (118).  As with last month, the district with the highest claimant count Worcester at 3.7% on the ONS basis and the lowest is Malvern Hills at 2.2%.  As far as urban centres are concerned the highest is again Kidderminster at 5.2% on the County’s slightly different basis that seems to be about 25% higher than the ONS figures, and the lowest is still Wythall at 1.8%.

Young People

The number of young people aged 18-24 claiming JSA fell to 3,090 from 3,130 in August and 3,465 in September last year.  Of the 3,090, 2,640 have been claiming up to one year, which means that 450 (14.7% of the total) have been claiming for more than a year.  Whilst it remains that the ten wards in the County that have the highest 18-24 unemployment are fairly predictably those which appear high up the various deprivation indices it is also the case that some others have recently appeared.  This may be because the level of youth unemployment has been slowly falling so that some of these other places are starting to have percentages similar to those that appear regularly.  It is also true that we are dealing with quite small numbers so any variation can have more marked effect than if the numbers were bigger.  Further information can be found on page 21 of the September County Economic Summary.

Long-term Unemployment

The male rate of unemployment increased rapidly at the beginning of the recession (from just over 2% in 2008 to 5.5% in 2010).  It has since dropped to 4%.  However, the female rate increased more slowly from around 1% in 2008 to 2% in 2010 but has remained more or less constant since then, and is currently just above 2%.  Long-term (overall) unemployment has fallen for those claiming benefit for more than six months by 2% to 38.8% but the figure for those claiming for more than 12 months has increased by 0.2% to 22.8%.

Vacancies

The number of vacancies in the County has gone up to 6,459 in September   from 5,143 in August and 3,737 in the same month last year.  Whether this is yet a trend may be a little early to say, but it may reflect the more positive picture nationally of increasing employment.

This Blog

It is some time since I posted anything on this blog and I’ve written a separate piece to explain why and to invite comments about its usefulness.  I’d be interested to know what you think.