Fewer claiming benefits in Northumberland

A record number of workers joined company payrolls in Northumberland last month, new figures reveal.
Fewer claiming benefitsFewer claiming benefits
Fewer claiming benefits

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows an estimated 131,413 people in the area were on company payrolls in December – 863 more than in November.

The figure was up from 125,981 in December 2020 and was also above the pre-pandemic level of 127,988 workers on company payrolls in December 2019.

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The number of workers on UK payrolls also jumped by a record 184,000 month-on-month, to 29.5 million.

Separate ONS figures also show there was a fall in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in Northumberland last month.

Around 7,620 people were on out-of-work benefits as of December 9 – down by 3,295 from the month before – and meaning four per cent of the area's working population sought support in December.

Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said: “Nationally, those reporting they’d recently been made redundant fell to their lowest since records began more than a quarter of a century ago and, while job vacancies reached a new high in the last quarter of 2021, they are now growing more slowly than last summer.”

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The data also shows the median monthly salary for payrolled workers in Northumberland rose from £1,859 in November to £1,896 at the end of the year.

National average wage growth, including bonuses, was 4.2% in the three months to November but with inflation hitting 5.1% in November, real wages failed to keep up with the rising cost of living for the first time since July 2020.