Buckinghamshire’s claimant count, November 2018

Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rose by 45 in November to stand at 2,980.

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 (LEPs).  Over the last year Buckinghamshire’s claimant count rate has risen by 2.8 per cent, the smallest rise among LEPs and well below the rises of 21.6 and 26.5 per cent recorded across Great Britain and the south east region (see chart 7).  There are now 1.7 local vacancies for every claimant in Buckinghamshire compared to 0.7 across Great Britain.

Table 1: Claimant Count, November 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

Women accounted for 35 of 45 additional claimants in Buckinghamshire in November.  Women now make up 41.1 per cent of all claimants in the county, the highest share recorded since comparable records began in 1986.  Over the last year the number of male claimants has remained unchanged at 1,750, however female claimants have risen by 7.4 per cent (85) to 1,230.

Over the last year the claimant count has risen fastest for men aged 50 and over (up 10.7 per cent), ahead of women aged 25-49 (up 8.8 per cent).  Men aged 16-24 are the only group to have seen a fall (down 21.7 per cent).

There were 5,192 advertised job openings in Buckinghamshire in November, 19.8 per cent less (1,280 openings) than in October and 10.8 per cent (629) less than in November 2017.The roles most commonly advertised in Buckinghamshire in the year to the end of November have been other sales occupations (2,872 openings) ahead of programmers and software development professionals (2,312); other administrative occupations (2,150); other customer service occupations (2,012); nurses (1,814); marketing and sales directors (1,672); and other managers and proprietors in services (1,669).

Over the last year the baseline skills most sought by recruiters in Buckinghamshire were communication skills, sought in 15,707 job openings, or 22.2 per cent of the total, ahead of organisational skills (7,098); Microsoft Excel (5,779); planning (5,624); and being detail orientated (5,399). The commonly sought specialised skills were customer service (7,805); teamwork (6,519); sales (5,350); teaching (5,236); budgeting (4,325); and project management (3,661).

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

Source: DWP, 2018

Table 2: Claimant count by age group, November 2018

Source: DWP, 2018

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

Source: DWP, 2018

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

Source: DWP, 2018

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

Source: DWP, 2018

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

Source: DWP, 2018

Chart 6: Annual change in jobs openings by occupation (%, years to November)

Source: Labour Insight

Chart 7: Annual change in claimant count over time (%), to November 2018

Source: DWP, 2018