Unemployment among the South West’s young

To judge from his tweets Ben Bradshaw MP (@BenPBradshaw) is firmly engaged with his Exeter constituency. On 19 July he tweeted:

JSA is Job Seekers Allowance, paid to those who are eligible and between 18 and pension age.

Taking the tweet literally, in Exeter in June 2012 for every 100 18 to 24 year olds who had been in receipt of JSA for more than a year, a year earlier there would have been been only 20. Looking for the actual numbers, I turned to the relevant House of Commons Library Research Paper (Unemployment by Constituency, July 2012, RP12/41 dated 18 July 2012), in particular:

Table 1B which shows that in June 2012 the total number of JSA claimants in Exeter was 2039, up by 23 from a year earlier. Of these, 475 had been claiming for more than 12 months, up by 290.

Table 2 which breaks the 2039 down into 645 aged 24 and under, 1055 aged 25 to 49 and 330 aged 50 and over (9 have been ‘lost’ presumably because of rounding to the nearest 5).

The Venn diagram below brings these numbers together, but the size of the overlapping area which corresponds to those on JSA for more than a year AND aged 18 to 24 is undefined (x):

However, the Economy & Tourism Unit of Exeter City Council produced an Economic Trends Report in November 2011 which provides this data for October 2010 and October 2011 as being 25 and 30 respectively (page 5). Interpolating for June 2011 gives an estimate of 28. Again turning to the HoC Library Research Paper a year ago (Unemployment by Constituency, July 2011, RP11/58 dated 13 July 2011), it is possible to produce a similar Venn diagram for June 2011. And also x can be estimated as about 140 ie’fivefold’.

The implications are pretty startling. The total number of unemployed in Exeter has changed little in a year and the proportion aged 18 to 24 has remained 32%. But the proportion of the 18 to 24s on JSA for more than a year has gone from 4% to 22% in the 12 months since June 11. In the same period for the over-24s the movement was from 11% to 24%. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Regional Labour Market Statistics, July 2012 show that this trend is apparent among the 18 to 24s across the whole South West region:

As can be seen, the fivefold increase in Exeter is below that of the SW region which is showing a more than sevenfold increase (725%). The SW region had nearly twice the national (UK) movement in the ONS data for the same period, which is up 405%.

Reporting Exeter youth joblessness

A few posts back, I remarked that there are only two Labour-held parliamentary seats in England west of Bristol. One of these is Exeter where the MP is Ben Bradshaw, who was Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport in the Labour government up to 2010. Like many MPs he makes use of Twitter (@BenPBradshaw), and on 15 March he tweeted this:

Dreadful #Exeter and SW long term youth (18-24) joblessness rates up massive 230.8% & 183.6% respectively Feb 2011 - Feb 2012 #toryfail

I was a bit alarmed by the figures he quoted, not because of underestimating the seriousness of youth unemployment across the UK, but for numeracy reasons. I am wary of percentages, which are after all only a form of fraction, when they are greater than 100 (although I’m 110% committed to this blog of course), especially when they come with a decimal place and so have four significant figures.

The formula for expressing a year on year increase as a percentage is pretty simple. If a year ago there were M of something and now there are N, the calculation is:

Percentage increase = (N – M) * 100 / M

So, if 1000 youths were jobless in Exeter in Feb 2011 and 3308 were jobless in Feb 2012:

(3308 - 1000) * 100 / 1000 = 230.8%

but Exeter isn’t in Greece, and more than three times the number of jobless than there were a year ago seems a bit surprising. Helpfully, every month the House of Commons Library produces a Research Paper which “contains labour market figures for parliamentary constituencies, as well as a summary of the latest national and regional statistics” and the March 2012 issue (RP 12/12) contains the data for February 2012. Table 2 on page 39 shows that in Exeter the number of Job Seekers Allowance claimants who are 24 and under in February 2012 was 725, an annual % change of 13.3. The equivalent number of claimants in the March 2011 issue (RP 11/26), at Table 2 on page 35, was 640. Using the calculation above:

(725 – 640) * 100 / 640 = 13.3%

as in RP 12/12.

There are no detailed regional statistics in the Research Papers but RP 12/12 has some relevant graphics. On page 6 there is a chart (below) which shows that the South West has the lowest unemployment level of the English regions.

There are also maps showing the unemployment rate in the South West:

and the change in the claimant count:

While some nearby constituencies are worse (top quintile), Exeter is not well-placed in the fourth quintile, but on both these measures the situation is far poorer in the North East (below).

It may be that Ben Bradshaw has made use of some other data which do substantiate the figures in his tweet. If so, the discrepancy with the situation which the House of Commons Library Research Paper seems to be indicating ought to be addressed.

ADDENDUM 18 APRIL