Unemployment fall offers new hope for region
Hopes that the West Midlands may be emerging from the effects of recession have been boosted with a fall in the latest unemployment figures.
Latest details released from the Office of National Statistics show that unemployment in the region fell to 9.6% in the three months to November.
While encouraging, the figure is above the national average of 7.8% although it is not the worst region in the country, that honour going to the North East with a rate of 9.8%.
There are now 259,000 people of working age in the West Midlands officially unemployed.
Business leaders in Birmingham and Solihull welcomed the fall in the number of jobless people but added the government’s priority should be to create an environment that allowed businesses to create more jobs.
Commenting on the labour market figures, Katie Teasdale, head of policy at Birmingham and Solihull Chamber of Commerce, said: “If we are going to avoid a jobless recovery, then the government needs to include initiatives such as cancelling the 2011 one per cent rise in national insurance contributions.
“The latest figures may still reflect seasonal employment and we will be interested in seeing if this decrease is sustained.
“Unemployment in the West Midlands is still one of the highest in the country and presents a serious challenge, as it is anticipated that the figures will rise in future months.
“We are also concerned that the level of economically inactive people has increased and that long-term unemployment – those out of work for more than a year – figures, have increased by 29,000 to 631,000, which is the highest figure since 1997. Both of these issues need to be tackled.”
Nationally, the figures show there are 2.46m people out of work, a drop of 7,000. This is the first quarterly fall in the number of unemployed people since the three month period to May 2008.
However, the number of people unemployed for more than 12 months increased by 29,000 over the quarter to reach 631,000, the highest figure since the three months to November 1997.
The number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance in December fell by 15,200 on the month to reach 1.61m.
One significant disappointment for the West Midlands will be the decline in the number of manufacturing jobs. The figures show there were 2.6m employed nationally in manufacturing industries in the three months to November, down 212,000 on a year earlier – an indication of how severe the recession has been on this vital sector.
Whole economy productivity was 3.1% lower in the third quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier. Whole economy wage costs rose 4.1% over the same period.
Manufacturing productivity increased by 0.7% in the three months to November compared with a year earlier. Manufacturing wage costs increased by 1.8% in the same period.
