County bucks jobless trend

Unemployment in Shropshire is rising, new figures showed today - bucking a national downward trend which sees a record number of people in work.

The jobless total rose by 357 across the county despite falling by 13,500 nationally to 925,800.

In Shropshire the figure went up to a total of 5,490 last month.

The biggest increase was in Telford, the county's industrial heartland, where the figure rose by nearly 200 from 2,291 to 2, 490. It follows high-profile job losses in the area including at toy firm Merrythought.

No district of Shropshire escapes the rise, with the jobless total up 66 in Bridgnorth, from 428 to 494, up 26 in North Shropshire (564 to 590) 24 in Oswestry (446 to 470), 28 in Shrewsbury (879 to 907) and 14 in South Shropshire (277 to 291).

Nationally, the number of people in work increased by 51,000 over the latest quarter to 29.04 million, the highest total since records began in 1971.

But the good news was tempered by an increase in the number of people classed as economically inactive, including students, people taking early retirement, looking after a relative or just not seeking work.

That figure increased by 19,000 to 7.85 million or 21 per cent of the working age population, the worst figure for almost a year.

The number of manufacturing jobs also continued to fall, down by 63,000 in the three months to December compared with a year earlier, to just over three million, the lowest on record.

The fall in the claimant count was the biggest since May 2004.

Other data from the Office for National Statistics today showed there were almost 608,000 job vacancies in the UK economy in the three months to January, up by more than 7,000 from the previous three months.