Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, January 2018

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rose by 110 in January to stand at 2,975 or 0.9 per cent of working age residents, the 3rd lowest rate among the 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships and 4th lowest among England’s 27 county council areas.

The annual rate of growth of claimants in Buckinghamshire fell to 5.9 per cent in January, the lowest it has been since October 2016 and the first time it has fallen below the national rate of increase since September 2016.

Table 1: Claimant Count, January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

The number of Job Seekers’ Allowance claimants looking for work in managerial, professional and technical occupations fell to 190 in January having stood at 1,180 at the start of 2012.  The share of JSA claimants looking for work in these roles is now 8.9 per cent in Buckinghamshire, having been more than double (at 18.3 per cent) at the start of 2012.  In contrast, while the number of claimants looking for work in sales occupations is almost unchanged, the share of all claimants stood at 66.6 per cent (1,425 people) in January, having been less than a quarter (22.8 per cent) in January 2012.


There were 5,271 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in January, down 15.5 per cent from the 6,238 recorded in January 2017.  The number of openings fell across the occupational structure, as shown in chart 6 below, with sales occupations seeing the largest falls both relatively and absolute.  There are now 1.8 openings per claimant in Buckinghamshire, compared to 0.7 across the UK.  


The most commonly advertised roles in January were sales related occupations, including retail sales representatives with 205 openings, ahead of nurses (191), programmers and software development professionals (182), secondary school teaching professionals (146), other administrative occupations (including administration assistants and clerks, 127), marketing and sales directors (122), and other customer service occupations (122).  


In the last year the most sought specialised skills were customer service (7,403 openings), team work and collaboration (6,213), sales (5,807), teaching (4,968), budgeting (4,445), project management (3,657), and accounting (2,965).  The most sought baseline skills were communication skills (15,762), ahead of organisational skills (7,127), Microsoft Excel (5,648), planning (5,553), being detail orientated (5,296), Microsoft Office (3,714), creativity (3,655), and problem solving (3,538).


Chart 1: Buckinghamshire’s claimant count over time, to January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Table 2: Claimant count by age group, January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 2: Aylesbury Vale’s claimant count over time, to January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 3: Chiltern’s claimant count over time, to January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 4: South Bucks’ claimant count over time, to January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 5: Wycombe’s claimant count over time, to January 2018


 
Source: DWP, 2018

Table 3: Claimant count by sought occupation (JSA only), January 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 6: Annual change in job openings in Buckinghamshire (Jan 2017=100)

Source: Labour Insight, 2018