The coalition government has welcomed the latest national employment figures which show a fall of 50,000 in the jobless total. There was also a fall of 62,000 in those sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds who are out of work – that figure fell below the one million mark during three months to August.
However, most interest in the figures has been in the large rise in those in work. The national figures show people in work rose by 212,000 to a record level of 29,600,000. More than half of that increase was in part-time jobs. Those in part-time work reached the record high level of 8,100,000 and of those 1,400,000 had taken part-time jobs because they could not find full-time work.
This month’s release of figures for the Devizes constituency does not fit neatly with the national figures for the numbers without work. Those in the constituency claiming jobseekers allowance (JSA) in September stood at 1,003 – exactly the same figure as for the previous month. The figures for those aged under twenty-four were slightly up; those aged between twenty-five and fifty slightly down; and those over fifty slightly also down, standing at exactly the same figure as in July.
Those in the constituency claiming JSA for more than twelve months – the normal definition of the long-term unemployed – went up again very slightly. And more worryingly, the Jobcentre Plus vacancies fell by over a third between August and September. This may well be due to seasonal factors.
The data released for constituency-by-constituency employment does not distinguish between full and part-time jobs.
Claire Perry, the Devizes constituency MP, writes in her weekly newspaper column that there is a local trend in improved trading conditions and that local “companies are either maintaining or increasing their employment”: “This encouraging local trend was borne out by the employment data released this week…”
Her column was headed: “Economy is on the road to recovery at long last”. Mrs Perry also praised the thirty per cent rise between April 2010 and March 2012 for those in the constituency who have started apprenticeships. That was considerably less than the increase in apprenticeship starts in the constituency between April 2008 and March 2010.
Mrs Perry writes: “…I am trying to do my bit by looking to hire an apprentice in my local Devizes office.” The successful applicant will help with “the full range of constituency business” and will follow a Business and Administration Diploma Level 2 with Wiltshire College.
Those interested can apply online or by emailing tamara.reay@parliament.uk
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