Unemployment by Constituency, March 2016

This paper contains claimant count figures for parliamentary constituencies, as well as a summary of the latest labour market statistics for the UK as a whole.

• The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or not in work and claiming Universal Credit fell by 18,000 between January 2016 and February 2016, to 716,700.

• The unemployment rate was 5.1% in November 2015-January 2016. The ILO measure of unemployment was 1.68 million people, down 28,000 from the previous quarter and down 171,000 from the previous year.

• The number of people in employment was 31.42 million in November 2015-January 2016, up 116,000 from the previous quarter and up 478,000 from the previous year. The employment rate was 74.1%, the joint highest since comparable records began in 1971.

• Average weekly total pay in Great Britain increased by 2.1% in the three months to January 2015 compared with the previous year. Regular pay (excluding bonuses) grew by 2.2%. CPI inflation averaged 0.2% over this period.