North West Sees Biggest Unemployment Rise

18 April 2012, 10:25 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

The new stats out this morning show 325,000 people were out of a job from December - February 2012 in the region compared to 307,000 in the three months to November.

The figures also show still more men than women in the North West are unemployed - 192,000 men aren't working in the North West compared to 134,000 women.

In total 9.6% of the region's population's out of work - that's almost 1 in 10.

In the same three months of 2010 (December-February) the jobless figure for the region stood at 269,000, meaning there's been an annual increase of 57,000.

Nationally, unemployment has fallen for the first time in almost a year. The figure now stands at 2.65 million - down 35,000 in the three months to February.

Youth unemployment's also fallen nationally - there were 1.03 million unemployed 16-to-24-year-olds, down by 9,000 and the lowest total since last autumn.

But the number of people out of work for over a year jumped by 26,000 to 883,000, the worst total since 1996.

The figures also showed an 89,000 rise in the number of people working part-time because they could not find full-time jobs, to a total of 1.4 million, the highest figure since records began in 1992.