LIVERPOOL city region bucked the national trend last month as unemployment figures released yesterday showed its increase in jobseekers was significantly lower than the rest of the UK.

But there were renewed fears last night for workers at Jaguar Land Rover, in Halewood, after the car-maker announced it was cutting 200 jobs across the UK.

The company, taken over earlier this year by Indian giant Tata Motors, insists the move isn’t due to falling sales but is seeking voluntary redundancies from its 16,000 strong workforce.

It is not yet known how many of those could be on Merseyside, where the company employs around 2,000 people. This news provided a dark spot to what was generally a brighter picture for Merseyside employment yesterday, with the exception of St Helens.

The data from the Office of National Statistics showed only 666 additional people claimed in September across the six local authorities.

Nationally, the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance increased sharply by 31,800 in September to 939,900, a rise of 2.3%. It is the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest figure for almost two years.

The longer-term trend also shows the city region’s claimant count is growing more slowly than the rest of the country.

In the last year, the UK claimant rate has increased 14.1% and the North West by 16.4%, while the Liverpool city region’s rate has grown by 12.7%.

Economist Peter Stoney, a director of Liverpool Research Group in Macroeconomics, said: “There are special circumstances in respect of Liverpool and Merseyside as there have been significant investments. The docks are doing well, so is the retail sector, and Culture year is doing well.

“We are going to be insulated from the worst effects in the short-term.”

Lorraine Rogers, chief executive of economic development agency The Mersey Partnership, was pleased with the figures, but believes there is still a lot of work to do.

She said: “It is an encouraging sign but we need to concentrate hard on reducing the figure further and in tackling high levels of worklessness persisting in some areas of the city region.”

In September, Halton saw an increase in its claimant rate of just 0.8% – 20 people – while Knowsley, Wirral and Liverpool all saw increases of 1.5% or less. Sefton’s increase of 2.3% was also below the North West average.

However, St Helens’ claimant rate increased by 4.3%, and its rise of 157 people accounted for nearly one-quarter of the city region’s additional claimants. Sara Williams, director of enterprise development at St Helens Chamber of Commerce, said: “The picture is mixed. There are businesses which are finding it tough and there has been a clampdown as people aren’t spending as much. But the Chamber held a briefing with the Bank of England last week, and the companies were all saying they were doing quite well. The general mood is quite steady.

“We are still putting people through to jobs and there are still plenty of vacancies in the borough.

“We are expecting some aspects of the business landscape will change. It’s not a rosy picture, but what we believe is we have got enough experience and knowledge to trade through and out of the problems.”

But the region’s underlying position remains poor, and its six authorities are all in the bottom seven places in the table of 46 North West authorities. Only Manchester, in 44th place, breaks up the region’s authorities.

Liverpool is bottom of the North West list with 5.6% – 16,000 people – of the working age population claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and Knowsley has a claimant rate of 4.7%. The UK rate is just 2.5% and the North West rate is 3.0%.

Elsewhere in the region, Wirral’s rate is 3.6% while Halton, Sefton and St Helens all have a claimant rate of 3.5%. The big increase in St Helens has seen it slip below Oldham and Blackpool in the last month.

Nationally, 1.79m people were out of work in the three months to August, and the unemployment rate of 5.7% is the highest since the spring of 2000. The quarterly increase of 164,000 in the number of people out of work, including those not eligible for benefit, was the highest for 17 years.

The president of Merseyside TUC, Alec McFadden, expects the situation in Merseyside and across the UK to get much worse in the coming months.

“Merseyside’s claimant rate is growing more slowly because unemployment was higher here already,” he said.

“We are officially in recession, the CBI and the TUC have said so. We are not surprised at these figures and my view is it will be nearer 3m next year.

The Department for Work and Pensions yesterday announced a further £100m to help people who lose their jobs. The extra money would help the unemployed and those facing redundancy to retrain.

OPINION: PAGE 12

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