Figures for unemployed claimants came out this morning which show that 3434 people on the Isle of Wight were claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) in April 2013.
Unemployment Benefit figures released by the Office for National Statistics show a fall of 418 since March 2013, which reported 3,852 JSA claimants, and a rise of 131 from April 2012 (3,303).
That means 4.2% of the resident population of area aged 16-64 is claiming JSA – 1.8% more than the rest of the South East (2.4%), and 0.5% more than the whole of the UK (3.7%).
