Social Security Benefits: Great Grimsby

(asked on 15th May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the causes of the changes in the number of claimants aged between 18 and 24 in Great Grimsby constituency between April 2017 and April 2018.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 21st May 2018

The number of unemployment related benefit claimants aged 18-24 in the Great Grimsby constituency was 670 as of April 2018 – up by 30 since April 2017 but down by 690 since April 2010.

The claimant count is currently designated as an experimental statistic by the Office for National Statistics as a result of the roll out of Universal Credit. Universal Credit full service expands the ‘Searching for Work’ conditionality group to cover a wider group of claimants, to encourage these claimants into work or to work more. This policy decision has the effect of bringing additional people into the claimant count compared to the pre-Universal Credit system and the number of people recorded as being on the Claimant Count is therefore likely to rise. DWP have published a consultation on developing a new measure for labour market performance over time. this can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposals-for-a-new-statistical-series-to-count-unemployed-claimants

Using estimates from the Labour Force Survey, the unemployment rate in the Yorkshire and Humber region is at 4.6% for period January to March 2018 - down 4.9 percentage points since the period February to April 2010. The number of people in employment is 2.59 million, up 211,000 since 2010.

This is consistent with the continuing improvements in the wider economy. The UK’s unemployment rate is currently 4.2% and has not been lower since 1975. The employment rate in the UK stands at a record high of 75.6% and there are a near record 806,000 vacancies throughout the economy.

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