Chart 1: UK unemployment (ILO)
The latest unemployment figure is 2,510,000, which is a rise of 9,000 from the figure published last month. We estimate, on the basis of later claimant count figures, that unemployment may fall next month, although this remains highly uncertain.
Chart 2: Percentage unemployed not claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance
In previous recessions the proportion of the unemployed not claiming benefit has shrunk to around zero. This recession, we started with a historically high proportion of unemployed people not claiming JSA. The proportion not claiming fell, as expected. In March-June the pattern changed in an unexpected way, with the proportion of unemployed people not claiming JSA rising. The latest data shows the proportion not claiming JSA roughly stable at 35% (882,000).
Chart 3: Youth long-term unemployment (six months and over, 18-24)
Youth long-term unemployment (which can include students) rose by 15,000 from last month’s figure and is now 351,000. The claimant count measure, even if one adds in young people on New Deal options and the Community Task Force, remains far behind at 130,800, and is falling.
Chart 4: Adult long-term unemployment (12 months and over, 25+)
Adult long-term unemployment on the survey measure has now risen to 542,000. The claimant count measure, including people on programmes, has risen to an estimated 242,700. The 12-month plus claimant figure is expected to continue rising until 12 months after new benefit claims were down.
Chart 5: Unemployment rates by age
The youth unemployment rate (including students) has now risen to 17.9%. The rate for those 25-49 is now 6.5% and for those 50 and over is 4.6%. The rise in unemployment rates since the recession started has been 5.7 percentage points for young people, 2.6 points for those aged between 25 and 49 and 1.8 points for the over-50s.
Chart 6: Out of work young people
The number of out of work young people who are not in full-time education has risen since January 2008 by 215,000 or 17.7%. The rise has affected the unemployed and the larger number of inactive, neither group in full-time education. The number of unemployed in full-time education has risen as well, to 277,000 in this month’s survey figures. These figures are seasonally adjusted so take into account normal holiday patterns. The rise in the number of young JSA claimants had been sharper than that in survey unemployed – now around 459,000 including those on New Deal options, and has been falling since October 2009.
Chart 7: Jobseeker’s allowance – claimant count, new claims and leavers
The number of new claims for JSA continued to slide downwards this month, to the lowest level since November 2008. This includes online claims. Meanwhile the number of leavers also slowly dropped. We estimate that the ‘leavers rate’ – leavers as a proportion of those who could leave, has risen from last month’s 18.1% to 18.2%.
Chart 8: Jobseeker’s allowance – claimant count
The JSA claimant count fell by 27,100 in April, taking the total to 1,516,900. The fall was lower than last month’s 32,700 (after revisions) but still sharp.
Chart 9: Jobseeker’s allowance – claimants staying through each three-month threshold (seasonally adjusted)
There were positive changes on these measures for all groups, with the exception of the group passing through 12 months. This group is affected by administrative factors associated with the startup of Flexible New Deal (in the first areas). The trends for longer-term unemployed groups are particularly positive and are now down to pre-recession levels.
Chart 10: Jobseeker’s allowance – proportion of starters in month becoming longer-term unemployed
These figures are based on those in Chart 9, but show the patterns of the same people passing through successive quarterly thresholds.This shows a consistently improving picture. The flow rate through three months reached 57.4% in April 2009, very close to the December 1990 level. This group, who initially claimed in the quarter to January 2009, have now reached the 15-month mark, with 9.6% remaining, compared with 18.6% of the December 1990 group. The more recent patterns would indicate that the proportion reaching 12 months may fall further, towards, and possibly below, DWP’s objective of 8%.
Chart 11: Vacancies – whole economy survey
The number of vacancies (in the ONS survey of the whole economy) slid downward this month to 475,000. As the number of vacancies is quite volatile, the ONS uses a three-month average.
Chart 12: Vacancies and unemployment ratio
The number of vacancies as a percentage of the unemployed has now risen slightly to 19.6%.
The ONS has now started publishing figures for unemployed people per vacancy, which we are now using, with the exception of the latest figure, which is our estimate. The ONS figures show there are now 5.3 unemployed people per vacancy compared with 2.3 in March 2008.
Chart 13: Vacancies – Jobcentre Plus new 30-hour plus vacancies
Inclusion’sanalysis of Jobcentre Plus vacancies shows a fall in full-time vacancies. There was a seasonally adjusted fall of 14,000, taking the total to 214,000 new vacancies a month in February-April. The February snow and Easter may have affected these figures.
Chart 14: UK employment
Employment rose by 5,000 on the figure published last month, to 28,829,000. The headline quarterly fall of 76,000 was affected by snow disruption in January and February.
Chart 15: Employment rate in the UK
The employment rate fell to 72.0%.
Chart 16: Claimants for inactive benefits and the economically inactive – incapacity benefits
This shows claimants of Incapacity Benefit (IB), and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) (the red dots), compared with survey figures for the economically inactive due to long-term sickness. These show a sharp rise in the survey measures of inactivity due to long-term sickness in the last quarter, which does not appear in the DWP experimental estimates for ESA/IB claimants since November 2009. These figures will include in both measures lone parents who have health problems and are economically inactive and claiming ESA or IB, although there is a measure of doubt about how they respond to surveys about the reason for not looking for work.
Chart 17: Claimants for inactive benefits and the economically inactive - lone parents
This shows claimants of Income Support as lone parents plus lone parents claiming JSA (the red squares) and survey figures for those economically inactive looking after family. Lone parents who now have to claim JSA as their youngest child is 10 or more (48,545 in March 2010) or other lone parent JSA claimants (11,070) are included in the benefit measure. Lone parents claiming ESA or IB will not be included in the lone parent claimant category. Both measures are highly volatile (despite the survey measures being seasonally adjusted) but are in broad agreement around a flat trend.
Chart 18: Employment rate quarterly change in regions – December 2009 to February 2010
This quarter, the biggest fall in the employment rate has been in Scotland and the East Midlands. Northern Ireland and the North West and the South West showed large improvements.
Chart 19: Unemployment rate quarterly change in regions – December 2009 to February 2010
Only two regions, the West Midlands and the South West showed improvements in the unemployment rate this quarter. The largest rises were in Northern Ireland and Wales.
Chart 20: Inactivity rate quarterly change in regions – December 2009 to February 2010
There was overall a small rise in the inactivity rate. The East Midlands, Scotland and the South West have seen large rises in the inactivity rate. This is a potential concern, particularly if, and we do not yet know whether this is the case, the rise in inactivity is not simply students. Northern Ireland and the North West show large quarterly falls in economic inactivity.
