Figures for unemployed claimants came out this morning which show that 1,624 people on the Isle of Wight were claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) in July 2014.
Unemployment Benefit figures released by the Office for National Statistics show a fall of 131 since June, which reported 1,755 JSA claimants, and a fall of 1,171 from July 2013 (2,795).
That means 2% of the resident population of area aged 16-64 is claiming JSA – 0.6% more than the rest of the South East (1.4%), and 0.4% less than the whole of the UK (2.4 %).
