West Midlands hit hardest by recession

Away from the MPs' expenses saga, around 7,000 people took part in a March for Jobs in Birmingham at the weekend. The protestors - including former trade minister Digby Jones - called on the Government to do more to protect manufacturing jobs.

It's no accident that the march was in Birmingham. The West Midlands has been hit hardest by this recession, according to a recent ONS report. Over the last year, the region has seen:

• the largest fall in employment rate - down 3%, from 73.2% to 70.3%
• the sharpest increase in redundancies - up from 7.2 per thousand employees, to 16.6 per thousand
• the largest increase in unemployment - up 3%, from 6.2% to 9.3%
• the largest fall in vacancies - down from 119 per 10k population, to 49 

There are now 11 JSA claimants per vacancy in the West Midlands - more than in any other region. The ONS says that employment rates started to fall sharply in the West Midlands in the second half of last year, and have continued to fall faster than in any other region since then.

At a city level, almost 100k people were claiming Jobseeker's Allowance in Birmingham in April - that's 37k more than a year earlier. Birmingham has seen one of the sharpest increases in JSA claimants - 7 out of every 100 adults is now claiming JSA in the city.

Elsewhere in the West Midlands, the JSA claimant count has increased even more sharply in cities like Stoke and Telford. See this full table of city-by-city claimant count.

These job losses explain why so many people were marching in Birmingham, and highlight that manufacturing is bearing the brunt of the recession. In the first quarter of this year, manufacturing output shrank by 6.2% (compared to the fourth quarter of 08).

We're hoping to work with Birmingham this year, to help the city identify where the future sources of growth will come from. See this outline of our 2009 research programme.

PS Mike Whitby managed not to lose his job tonight - he's just survived a leadership challenge, and stays on as Tory Leader of Birmingham - in partnership with the LibDems.

Comments

[celebrity oops]

Hardest recession is gone.