Unemployment in the Devizes constituency is still rising

Since January 2011 unemployment in the constituency has risen 24.3 per cent. This gives Devizesthe sixth worst percentage increase of all the constituencies in the United Kingdom.

Looking back to before the banking crisis and the recession, Devizes’ unemployment has increased by 164.8 per cent since January 2007. This puts the constituency behind just five Northern Ireland constituencies and East Lothian in Scotland and at well over twice the average increase for the whole of the UK.

But of course Devizes started from a much higher level of employment and the actual numbers of unemployed in our area are still comparatively low.  Perhaps the most alarming figure for the constituency is the 42 per cent increase in the year since January 2011 in JSA claimants who are aged twenty-four and under.

As Marlborough News Online reported last month, the number of those counted as employed but who are in part-time employment is also increasing.  Nationally, the number of people working in part-time jobs because they could not find full-time jobs stands at 1,350,000 – equal to 17.4 per cent of all part-time workers the highest figure since these statistics began to be recorded in this way in 1992.

In addition the number of people classed as in temporary employment is also rising – up nationally by 37,000 in the last quarter of 2011 and up by 8,000 over the year, to reach 1,550,000 people or 6.2 per cent of all employees.

The figures for part-time and temporary employment are not provided by the Office for National Statistics on a constituency by constituency basis.  Neither do the constituency figures distinguish between male and female claimants.  However nationally two-thirds of the increase shown in the unemployment figures published on Tuesday (February 15) were women – with 531,700 claiming unemployment benefits.

The number of those counted as long-term unemployed – that’s claiming JSA for twelve months and over – is low in the Devizes constituency.  The figure last month was 110 people – up just five from the January 2011 count.