Unemployment Falls Again In The North East

18 April 2012, 09:51 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

9,000 fewer people were unemployed in the 3 months to February with 144,000 in total out of work in our region.

The new stats out this morning show 144,000 people were out of a job from December - February 2012 in the region compared to 153,000 in the three months to November.

The figures also show still more men than women in the North East are unemployed - 87,000 men aren't working in the North East compared to 57,000 women.

In total 11.2% of the region's population's out of work - that's around 1 in 10.

In the same three months of 2010 (December-February) the jobless figure for the region stood at 130,000, meaning there's been an annual increase of 14,000.

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.

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.