Centre for Cities analysis of latest unemployment stats

Centre for Cities has launched a new interactive online tool to track unemployment in the 63 largest cities and towns in the UK. You can explore this here.

You can see here some key statistics from the newly released data today covering the period up to September 2020:

• The number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits has increased by 1.4 million since March and now stands at 2.7 million people.
• Birmingham has overtaken Blackpool as the place with the highest unemployment rate in the country. Almost one in ten adults in the city are claiming unemployment related benefits.
• Slough, Luton, London and Crawley remain the places that have had the largest increases in people claiming unemployment-related benefits since the March lockdown.
• Slough, Luton and Crawley have also all had the largest increases in unemployment in the past month.
• While also slowing down, the number of young people claiming unemployment-related benefits is rising at a faster rate than the number of adults overall.
• Half of large cities and towns have seen no change or decrease in claimant count compared to last month.

Percentage point change in unemployment claims March – September 2020
HIGHEST	LOWEST
Rank	Place	Percentage point change	Rank	Place	Percentage point change
1	Slough	5.6	1	York	2.3
2	Luton	5.4	2	Exeter	2.4
3	Crawley	5.1	3	Oxford	2.6
4	London	4.8	4	Swansea	2.6
5	Bradford	4.4	5	Cambridge	2.7
6	Northampton	4.3	6	Preston	2.7
7	Brighton	4.2	7	Warrington	2.8
8	Birmingham	4.1	8	Mansfield	2.9
9	Liverpool	4.1	9	Barnsley	2.9
10	Blackpool	4.1	10	Belfast	3

Percentage point change in unemployment claims August – September 2020
HIGHEST	LOWEST
Rank	Place	Percentage point change	Rank	Place	Percentage point change
1	Crawley	0.5	1	Blackpool	-0.3
2	Slough	0.3	2	Mansfield	-0.1
3	London	0.2	3	Barnsley	-0.1
4	Derby	0.2	4	Exeter	-0.1
5	Bradford	0.2	5	Doncaster	-0.1
6	Coventry	0.2	6	Preston	0.0
7	Aberdeen	0.2	7	Portsmouth	0.0
8	Birmingham	0.2	8	Glasgow	0.0
9	Oxford	0.1	9	Swindon	0.0
10	Brighton	0.1	10	Edinburgh	0.0

Overall unemployment claimant count rate, September 2020
HIGHEST	LOWEST
Rank	Place	Percentage	Rank	Place	Percentage
1	Birmingham	9.8	1	York	3.6
2	Hull	9.7	2	Exeter	4.2
3	Blackpool	9.5	3	Cambridge	4.3
4	Bradford	9.5	4	Oxford	4.6
5	Liverpool	8.9	5	Oxford	4.6
6	Luton	8.7	6	Reading	5.1
7	Slough	8.5	7	Edinburgh	5.1
8	Sunderland	8.3	8	Warrington	5.4
9	Middlesbrough	8.3	9	Preston	5.4
10	Blackburn	8.2	10	Norwich	5.6

Further analysis of this data by Centre for Cities Senior Analyst Elena Magrini can be read here.

All of our work on unemployment and the labour market can be read here.