Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, July 2018

By Buckinghamshire Business First
15 August, 2018

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rose by 55 in July to stand at 3,000, 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 the national claimant count has risen by 13.5 per cent, with Buckinghamshire’s rise of 1.7 per cent being the second lowest among LEPs and 4th lowest among county council areas.

Table 1: Claimant Count, July 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Women accounted for all 55 additional claimants. Women make up 39.8 per cent of all claimants in Buckinghamshire, the highest share since July 2015 and the 4th highest share recorded since comparable records began in 1986, almost double the record low of 21.5 per cent of June 2000. Women aged 25-49 saw the largest increase at 45 additional claimants, while the rise of 10 among women aged 50 and over took their share of all claimants to a new high of 12.3 per cent.

Sales occupations remain the most sought among Buckinghamshire’s Job Seekers’ Allowance claimants, sought by 1,645 claimants, or 69.0 per cent of the total, including 1,605 looking for work as sales and retail assistants. Employment in sales is forecast to rise 4.1 per cent (20,900) over the next ten years across the South East to stand at 457,000 by 2027, or 7.2 per cent of all jobs, up from 7.1 per cent in 2017 but down from 8.0 per cent in 2008.

There were 5,283 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in July, 3.0 per cent fewer (161 openings) than in June but 3.9 per cent (200) more than were posted in July last year. In July, 9.7 per cent of all job openings were for sales roles, including just 34 for sales and retail assistants. There are 1.8 openings per claimant in Buckinghamshire compared to 0.8 across Great Britain.

The most commonly advertised roles in July were programmers and software development professionals with 241 openings, ahead of nurses (175), other sales occupations (163), other administrative occupations (134), care workers and home carers (130), marketing and sales directors (128), and IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (127).