Geography shouldn’t be a factor to recovery
The likelihood of being in work has fallen in the North East, North West and West Midlands since 2010, despite the number of people in work increasing by over three-quarters of a million across the UK.
The TUC’s latest economic report, which looks at the job prospects across the nine English regions between 1993 and 2013, shows that while employment rates in London and the East of England are higher today than before the recession, people’s job chances in our region have continued to deteriorate.
Since 2010, the number of people in work has increased by 780,000 and the likelihood of people being in work has increased by one percentage point across the UK. But, unfortunately – and in an all too familiar picture, this overall increase hasn’t found its way to the North East, where people’s job chances have fallen by 0.6 percentage points.
What is also very telling in the report, is the fact that the working age population of the UK has grown by nearly four million in the last 20 years, and by a whopping 658,000 in the last five years alone. So, given the rise in the national working age population, it’s hardly surprising to see record levels of employment every month. The employment rates are a much more accurate reflection of the strength of the labour market.
Looking back over the last 20 years, the report shows that the North East and London performed the best, with employment rates increasing by over five per cent in spite of the recession. However, while the London jobs market has continued to perform relatively well during the recession, the same outlook in the North East has deteriorated since 2008.
It is not a surprise that the impact of the recession in the North East was more serious than in the rest of the UK, with the employment and unemployment rate gaps both growing a little. If we turn to the local authorities of the North East, the proportion of 16 – 74 year olds in employment in the 2011 Census ranges from 55.6 per cent in Middlesbrough to 65.6 per cent in North Tyneside. The ten point range between the highest and lowest is the smallest of any English region. North Tyneside only just manages to exceed the national average of 65.5 per cent 16-74 census employment rate figure, and is significantly below the highest scoring district in any other region.
Currently the north east average gross weekly earnings for full-time employees stands at £484, again significantly below the UK average of £563. Between 2008 and 2013, average pay in the region increased by 6.1 per cent, well below the 9.6 per cent national average.
It doesn’t take an economist to see that we need a more even-handed and proactive approach and that we need not only more jobs, but better paid ones, as well as better pay rises for those already in work to ensure the whole of the country’s workforce benefits from any recovery.
Beth Farhat – Northern TUC Regional Secretary
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