Charity fears rise in unemployment

Unemployment benefit claims have dipped in Bath and North East Somerset for the first time since lockdown began - but a charity has warned that the future looks bleak without further government intervention.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed that 5,035 people in the area were claiming unemployment benefit this June.

That’s down slightly from 5,205 people in May - the first time the number has dropped since the country was put on lockdown in March.

However, the figure is still more than twice as high as it was earlier in the year, with just 2,140 claimants in Bath and North East Somerset in January. The dip was also not significant enough to make much of a difference to the rate of people claiming these benefits.

In June, 4.1% of working age adults in Bath and North East Somerset were claiming unemployment benefits - down from 4.2% in May, but up from 1.7% in January. A report on these figures from the ONS also suggests that unemployment is actually higher than the claimant count would indicate, as economic inactivity is rising. This is where people are out of work but not currently looking for work.

Estimates for March to May show a quarterly increase of 92,000 people who are economically inactive in the UK - bringing the total to 8.5 million people (20.4% of working age adults).

Those who are economically inactive but who want a job increased by a record 253,000 people during that time, while those who do not want a job decreased by 161,000. This suggests that people who want employment are not currently looking for work, and further explains why we are not currently seeing a large rise in unemployment.

Sara Willcocks, Head of Communications at national poverty charity Turn2us, said: “It is now clear that we are heading for an intense period of high unemployment.”

She added: “The government introduced the furlough scheme to help millions of people keep their jobs at the height of the pandemic; they must now double down to protect people through the second phase of this crisis.

“We urge the DWP to increase social security spending, eliminate the five-week wait for Universal Credit and ensure that benefit conditionality is flexible to claimants’ needs and opportunities in their area.”

The benefit claimant count is a combination of claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and claimants of Universal Credit (UC) who fall within the UC ‘searching for work’ conditionality. It includes some people that are still working a small number of hours and earning a little, but who are claiming UC and are required to look for work as part of that. It also does not include everyone who is out of work, since not everyone is entitled to claim assistance, but it does indicate the trend in the employment market.

Nationally, 2.6 million people across the UK were claiming unemployment benefits in June down by 35,865 people compared to May. However, that’s still more than twice as many as the 1.2 million people who were claimants in January.