Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, June 2018

By Buckinghamshire Business First
18 July, 2018

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count fell for a third successive month in June to stand at 2,955, the lowest level recorded in 2018.

At 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. In the year to March 2018, Buckinghamshire’s unemployment rate of 1.8 per cent was the lowest among LEPs, well below the national rate of 4.4 per cent.

Over the last year Buckinghamshire has been the only LEP to have seen a fall in the claimant count, with the 0.8 per cent fall standing in comparison to the 12.4 per cent increase recorded across the country. South Bucks’ claimant count has fallen 17.5 per cent in the last year, the largest fall seen in England, with falls also recorded in Chiltern (3.7 per cent) and Aylesbury Vale (1.4).

Table 1: Claimant Count, June 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

There were 5,444 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in June, 2.8 per cent fewer (155 openings) than in June 2017 but 4.4 per cent (231) more than were posted in May 2018. In the last year, 58.8 per cent of Buckinghamshire’s job openings have been in managerial, professional and technical occupations, compared to 63.5 per cent across the UK and 73.5 per cent in London. There are now 1.8 openings per claimant in Buckinghamshire, compared to 0.8 across Great Britain.

The most commonly advertised roles in June were sales related occupations including retail sales representatives, with 234 openings, ahead of the 194 openings for other administrative occupations (including administration assistants and clerks). The next most commonly advertised roles were other customer service occupations (160), programmers and software development professionals (154), and nurses and marketing and sales directors (both 122).

In the last year the most sought baseline skills have been communication skills, specified in 14,729 job advertisements (or more than a third of all openings that specified skills), ahead of organisational skills (6,476), planning (5,265) and Microsoft Excel (5,136). The most sought specialised skills were customer service (6,996), teamwork and collaboration (6,027), sales (5,300), teaching (4,781), and budgeting (4,080).