Further rise in unemployment in the West Midlands

Unemployment in the West Midlands reached 285,000 in the three months to June 2009, the highest level since 1994.
Figures published today by the Office for National Statistics show that the unemployment rate in the West Midlands is at 10.6%. This is still the highest rate of all the English regions.
The West Midlands continues to be [...]

Rising unemployment: West Midlands is the worst affected region

The West Midlands has been hardest hit by the recession, has seen the biggest rise in unemployment and is the first region in England where the unemployment rate has topped 10%.
New Labour Market Statistics (PDF, 328kb) released on 15th July 2009 by the Office for National Statistics show the unemployment rate in the West Midlands increased [...]

Modelling population change in the West Midlands: call for information

How do you try to understand the changes that are happening in your populations? Have you developed a model to try to understand population change? If so, we would be interested to hear from you.
As part of our State of the Region dialogue on population change, we’re looking for regional examples of how people have [...]

Views of life sciences sector delivered to Government

Following the recent call to the the life sciences sector to gather views on what Government can do to help them, a proposal of crucial initiatives that the Government can implement to make an immediate impact on the prosperity of the sector was delivered to the Office of Life Sciences (OLS) on Wednesday 1 July 2009.
It covers [...]

Unemployment rises again in the West Midlands

Unemployment in the region grew by a further 39,000 in the three months to April 2009 and has now reached its highest level since 1994.
Data released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there are now just under quarter of a million people (249,000) out of work in the region giving an unemployment [...]

Life sciences sector: tell the Government what it can do to help you succeed

Until the end of June 2009, West Midlands life sciences companies have an unprecedented opportunity to tell the Government what it can do to help them succeed, as medical and healthcare industry specialist MedilinkWM launches the Voices of Industry Campaign.
Designed to give companies in the Life Sciences sector a united voice and combined influence, the [...]

Interactive map of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants

We’ve produced an interactive map to show how Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant rates are changing across the region in response to the recession.
Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) is the main unemployment benefit for working age people who are out of work.

Open the interactive map (requires Adobe Flash Player)
Download the dataset (XLS, 25kb)
Source: Office for National Statistics, claimant count (not [...]

Medical technologies sector optimistic

Medical and healthcare business opportunity organisation My M-Link recently polled its members about their business in this challenging economic time.
The results are a bit surprising and definitely worth considering in conversations around business support and government intervention. Hopefully, they can provide a more positive outlook for the media.

Understanding labour migration

At the launch of the State of the Region dialogue on population change Anne Green, from the Institute for Employment Research, spoke about recent developments in labour migration, such as the impact that the recession may have on migration and about the difficulties of measuring short-term international mobility.
Understanding migration is important when trying to understand population change.
Anne [...]

Subnational population projections

The Observatory’s recent event to launch the State of the Region dialogue on population change started with a presentation from Anthony Szary on subnational population projections.
Anthony is the Regional Statistician for the Office for National Statistics and is based at the Observatory.
Anthony took the group through the ONS process for calculating population projections at the subnational level. The easy [...]

Understanding our local populations

At the Observatory’s recent event to launch the State of the Region dialogue on population change, Richard Wilson from Sandwell PCT spoke about some of the problems with population data. However, with help from quotes from David Brent to Albert Einstein, Richard argued that these problems should not lead to ‘data paralysis’ where problems with data become reasons [...]

Moving the equalities agenda forward

Last week the Observatory launched the  State of the Region dialogue on population change. This event was the first step towards understanding what evidence on the changing population is needed by policy makers in the region.
Chris Allen, Director of Research and Policy at brap, was one of the presenters at this event and his presentation Beyond being statistically challenged: How [...]

What are the causes of worklessness?

The Observatory’s economic inclusion team recently posted on this site to ask for any information on the causes and dynamics of worklessness for a literature review. The completed literature review is now available.
Key findings from the review are that:

several groups of people are at high risk of worklessness – these include people in poor [...]

What is ‘worklessness’?

‘Worklessness’ is a fairly new term that is starting to be used and heard more frequently but what does it mean? Is it just a different word for unemployment?
The answer is that worklessness is not the same as unemployment but there are several different definitions of worklessness.
In the national indicator set of 198 indicators for [...]

Worklessness and sustainable employment: Call for information

The Observatory’s Economic Inclusion team is currently investigating what evidence, data and research is available on these two topics:

Causes of worklessness
This will include looking at the relationships between causal factors such as poor health, poverty, poor skills etc., movements in and out of the labour market and the dynamics of worklessness, issues of benefit dependency [...]