Unemployment by Constituency, January 2017

The Library has revised the methodology used to calculate constituency claimant rates in this edition of Unemployment by Constituency, following the release of new constituency population estimates for mid-2015 and to reflect recent changes in economic activity at the national and regional level. Therefore the claimant rates included in this month’s paper are not comparable with the rates shown in previous editions of Unemployment by Constituency, although in most cases the effect of the change is very small.

We have also changed the source we use to extract claimant data, in order to improve the accuracy of the data. This means claimant data are now rounded to the nearest five.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or claiming Universal Credit and required to seek work was 797,800 in December 2016, down 10,100 from November.

The unemployment rate was 4.8% in September-November 2016. The ILO measure of unemployment was 1.60 million people, 52,000 fewer than the previous quarter and 81,000 fewer than the year before.

The number of people in employment was 31.80 million in July-September 2016, broadly unchanged from the previous quarter and 294,000 more than the year before. The employment rate was 74.5%. 

Average weekly total pay in Great Britain increased by 2.8% in the three months to November 2016 compared with the previous year. Regular pay (excluding bonuses) grew by 2.7%. CPI inflation averaged 1.0% over this period.