Devizes MP Claire Perry has told the House of Commons that unemployment in her constituency is “creeping upwards and long-term unemployment is coming down” – and she claimed that apprenticeships were starting up at “an incredibly rapid rate.”
Speaking in an opposition debate on youth unemployment and bank bonuses, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the treasury, Rachel Reeves told Mrs Perry that youth unemployment in the Devizes constituency had increased by 36 per cent in the year to December 2011.
As both MPs have, at one time or another, been tipped as potential future leaders of their parties, the exchange had an added edge to it.
In fact the numbers claiming job seekers allowance for more than twelve months have come down when compared to December 2010. But between November and December 2011 they showed a slight rise from 8.9 per cent of claimants in the constituency to 9.1 per cent. The number of new apprenticeships for 2010-2011 are provisional and because of changes to the apprentice programme cannot reliably be compared with earlier years.
It may (so far) be an unusually mild winter, but figures on the economy have a very wintry feel. This week’s announcement showing that Britain’s economy shrank in the last three months of 2011, has led to fresh forecasts of more problems ahead for family budgets, shops and jobs.
The unemployment figures for the Devizes constituency are indeed getting worse. Although the total number of those claiming job seekers allowance was ‘only’ 1,081 last month, that was a 20.5 per cent increase on December 2010.
Rachel Reeves had rounded down the percentage of claimants aged twenty-four and under in the Devizes constituency – the actual figure in December 2011 was 36.7 per cent up on the previous year.
Devizes’ position in the league table of constituencies has worsened considerably. In December 2010 it was at 502 out of 533 English constituencies – just 31 places from being the constituency with the least unemployment. With the November figures Devizes had slipped to 483rd place and in the most recent figures – issued this month – it’s 475thplace. A year-on-year drop of twenty-seven places.
The official, headline-grabbing unemployment figures hide the fact that of the 29,120,000 people in employment in Britain, 7,860,000 are in part-time work. And that figure rose over the last quarter by another 75,000. Twenty-seven per cent of those in employment are now part-time workers.
Many of those will, of course, work part-time by choice. But these figures themselves hide some very part-time work indeed.
Recently a case came to light of a young man who signed a “zero hours contract” to work for a high street retailer. This means he has been called in during a week for as little as one four hour shift – earning him £15 before tax. In the official figures he counts as an employed person.
His employer told him that if he looked for other work to increase his weekly earnings, he would be dismissed. And 2012 is the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth.
