North West Unemployment Up Again

20 June 2012, 09:48 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

The North West has the highest number of people out of work in the country.

New stats show it's up by 8,000 between February and April - with a total of 325,000 people out of work.

That's the highest number of unemployed people in a region outside of London.

The new stats show the jobless total's up by 2.5% in the region.

Compared to this time last year, 45,000 more people are unemployed in the region, an increase of 17.4%.

Nationally there's better news. As a whole, unemployment has gone down in the UK by 51,000 to 2.61 million.

But the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance in May rose by just over 8-thousand to 1.6 million, ending two months of declines.