Unemployment by Constituency, January 2016

This paper contains labour market figures for parliamentary constituencies, as well as a summary of the latest national and regional statistics.

• The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or not in work and claiming Universal Credit fell by 4,300 between November and December 2015, to 785,900.
• The unemployment rate was 5.1% in September-November 2015. The ILO measure of unemployment was 1.68 million people, down 99,000 from the previous quarter and down 239,000 from the previous year.
• The number of people in employment was 31.39 million in September-November 2015, up 267,000 from the previous quarter and up 588,000 from the previous year. The employment rate was 74.0%, the highest since comparable records began in 1971.
• Average weekly total pay in Great Britain increased by 2.0% in the three months to November 2015 compared with the previous year. Regular pay (excluding bonuses) grew by 1.9%.

The Library has revised the methodology used to calculate constituency claimant rates for this edition of Unemployment by Constituency, following the release of new constituency population estimates for mid-2014 and to reflect changes in economic activity since the 2011 Census. Therefore the claimant rates included in this month’s paper are not comparable with the rates shown in previous editions of Unemployment by Constituency. Further details are given in section 4.3 of the briefing paper.