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North East jobless figures on the rise

Unemployment in the North East has risen to 105,000 after firms cut jobs amid the global economic crisis. The total has risen 5,000 in the last three months, and 8.4% of the region’s workers are now out of a job - the highest rate in the UK.

Nationally, the unemployment figure hit a 10-year high of just under two million as a record of number of people were made redundant and vacancies slumped to a new low.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance has now increased for 12 months in a row, up by 73,800 in January to 1.23 million, the highest total since the summer of 1999.

The wider measure of unemployment, which includes people not eligible for benefits, increased by 146,000 in the three months to December to 1.97 million, the worst figure since just after Labour came to power in 1997.

But the figure surprised some experts who had predicted unemployment would surge over two million today following a spate of job losses in recent months.

Unemployment has now increased by 369,000 over the past year and is expected to top three million as a result of the current recession.

Almost 260,000 people were made redundant in the last three months of 2008, the highest figure since records began in 1995 and an increase of 104,000 over the previous quarter.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .