Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, August 2018

By Buckinghamshire Business First
12 September, 2018

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rose by 110 in August to stand at 3,100, or 0.9 per cent of working age residents.

Buckinghamshire has the 3rd lowest claimant count rate among the 27 county council areas, ranking 2nd lowest among the 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Over the last year, Buckinghamshire’s claimant count has risen by 6.0 per cent, the 3rd smallest rise among LEPs, well below the 14.5 per cent rise recorded across Great Britain.

Wycombe’s claimant count has risen 9.1 per cent over the last year to take the district’s claimant count to its highest level since February 2015, while Aylesbury Vale’s claimant count has risen 4.3 per cent to its highest level since August 2014.

Table 1: Claimant Count, August 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

The claimant count in Buckinghamshire is rising fastest among residents aged 50 and over, up 14.0 per cent over the last year, taking the total to 1,015, the highest since February 2014. This age group now makes up 32.7 per cent of all claimants in the county, the highest proportion on record. The claimant count rate for this age group rose to 1.0 per cent in August, the first time it has risen above the rate for the county overall since comparable records began in 2001.

There were 5,796 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in August, the most since April, 9.7 per cent more (513 openings) than in July and 14.6 per cent (740) more than in August 2017. There were 1.9 openings per claimant in Buckinghamshire in August compared to 0.8 across Great Britain.

The most commonly advertised roles in August were other sales occupations (245 openings) ahead of other customer service occupations (207), other administrative occupations (180), nurses (157), programmers and software development professionals (151), and chefs (133).

The most commonly sought specialised skills in Buckinghamshire in August were customer service (cited in 702 job advertisements), teamwork / collaboration (598), sales (437), budgeting (335), project management (285), and teaching (279). Communication skills (1,388), organisational skills (577), Microsoft Excel (467), being detail orientated (454), planning (422), and creativity (305) were the most sought baseline skills.