Figures for unemployed claimants came out this morning which show that 2,669 people on the Isle of Wight were claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) in March 2014.
Unemployment Benefit figures released by the Office for National Statistics show a fall of 344 since February 2014, which reported 3,013 JSA claimants, and a fall of 1,183 from March 2013 (3,852).
That means 3.3% of the resident population of area aged 16-64 is claiming JSA – 1.5% more than the rest of the South East (1.8%), and 0.4% more than the UK (2.9 %).