Unemployment Rate Still Highest In The North East

18 December 2013, 09:45 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Unemployment in the North East fell by 3,000 in the three months to October - but one in 10 are still out of work here.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that a total of 133,000 people were unemployed in the region between August and October.

The region's unemployment rate was 10.1%, which means one in 10 people here don't have a job.

The number of people out of work in the North East has gone up by 9,000 compared to this time last year.

The Government was given a pre-Christmas boost on the jobs front when national unemployment fell by almost 100,000 and the number of people in work topped 30 million for the first time on record.

The jobless total fell by 99,000 in the quarter to October, the biggest cut in over a decade, to 2.39 million, giving a rate of 7.4%, the lowest for over four years.

The number of people in work was 30.09 million, an increase of 250,000 over the quarter and of almost half a million compared with a year ago. Private sector employment reached a record high of 24.4 million, and long-term and youth unemployment also fell.

But 1.47 million people were in part-time jobs because they could not find full-time work, the highest total since records began in 1992.