Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, January 2019

By Buckinghamshire Business First
20 February, 2019

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rose by 315 in January to stand at 3,485, the biggest rise in any single month since February 2012.

Over the last year, the claimant count has risen by 540, or 18.3 per cent, to reach the highest total since June 2014. At 1.1 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).

The number of claimants aged 50 and over has risen by 23.0 per cent over the last year, ahead of claimants aged 25-49 and those aged 18-24 (14.5). There are now 505 claimants aged 18-24, accounting for 14.5 per cent of the total, down from 20.5 per cent in January 2014, while the share of claimants aged 25-49 has also fallen from 56.2 to 53.1 per cent. Claimants aged 50 and over have seen their share of the total increase from 23.2 to 32.3 per cent.

There were 1,430 female claimants living in Buckinghamshire in January, the highest total since March 2014. Women now account for 41.0 per cent of all claimants, slightly below the 41.5 per cent recorded in December 2018 but well above the 35.6 per cent of January 2014 and the 27.0 per cent of January 2009.

Table 1: Claimant Count, January 2019

Source: DWP, 2019

There were 5,796 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in January, 4.1 per cent (227 openings) more than in December 2018 and 10.8 per cent (564) more than in January 2018. The roles most commonly advertised in Buckinghamshire in the year to the end of January were other sales related occupations (2,919 openings), ahead of other administrative occupations (2,308); programmers and software development professionals (2,188); other customer service occupations (2,177); and nurses (1,806).

Over the last year, the baseline skills most sought by recruiters in Buckinghamshire were communication skills, sought in 15,899 job openings, or 22.2 per cent of the total, ahead of organisational skills (7,336); Microsoft Excel (6,008); planning (5,689); being detail orientated (5,576); Microsoft Office (3,991); and creativity (3,979). The commonly sought specialised skills were customer service (8,061); teamwork and collaboration (6,559); sales (5,442); teaching (5,227); budgeting (4,431); and project management (3,609).