What’s the real number of jobless people in Britain?

9:23am GMT, Wednesday, 17 November 2010

The number of jobless is double the number of unemployed in Britain. See the breakdown by region and the costs of getting people back to work
• Get the data

How many people are really unemployed in the UK? What can be done to get more people off benefits and into suitable work? How much will it cost to help these people back into work? That is the saving from getting them into work?

Today, the unemployment figures come out. But what picture will they give us?

A study called ‘tackling worklessness in Britain’s weaker local economies‘, by a team at Sheffield Hallam, goes some way to answering these questions.

The report looks at how different regions of Britain will be able to cope with joblessness by identifying ‘weaker local economies’. The weaker economies will face greater unemployment and the report estimates that around a third of the entire UK population live in these areas.

People who claim an unemployment benefit of some kind is at five million in Britain, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. About half of these people are claiming incapacity benefits, so they are not registered as unemployed. The other half of the claims are made up, mostly, of job seekers allowance and then some lone parent income support.

The future of these claimants is greatly dependent on the number of new jobs available. The Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) report states that: 90 per cent of the job growth came from the public sector.

With the number of public sector jobs decreasing and the office of budget responsibility estimating 490,000 public sector job cuts by 2014/15, you can see the way this is heading. Unless the private sector picks up, and starts generating new jobs, it looks like an even more public money will be spent on benefits for the un-employed.

But the ABI report shows the growth in private sector has been modest, with just 570,000 additional jobs across Britain between 1999 and 2008.
The coalition government’s solution to joblessness is the new Regional Growth Fund (RGF), which is intended to support private sector job creation. The RGA has a much lower budget than the Regional Development Agencies which raises concerns for the authors of ‘tackling worklessness’.

The reform of incapacity benefits, initiated by the Labour government, will also continue. New claimants are already subject to the Work Capability Assessment which is considered by the authors of this report, to be quite a tough test of ability to work.

Both of these measures, if sucessful will move individuals from benefits and into employment, this leads to a reduction in the benefits bill and increases in tax revenue. The net cost of helping these people is therefore considered to be substantially smaller than the intial cost to providing the support.

Another set of questions is about which areas will be worst affected by unemployment, in effect which local economies are weaker, and what kind of investment is needed in these areas?

The report shows that of the 2.5 million on incapacity benefit, 1m alone are in the worst 100 districts outside London.

The report also presents a case study of two regions in Barnsley, Blackpool.

Thanks to SHU, we can share the data about regional joblessness with you.

What can you do with it?