North East Local Enterprise Partnership reaction to ONS regional labour market statistics

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership’s Chief Executive, Helen Golightly OBE, has commented on today’s regional labour market statistics, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).  

“Today’s statistics cover the North East region, which includes the North East LEP area and Tees Valley Combined Authority area.

“For the third month in a row we have seen a decrease in the employment rate, meaning there are fewer people in work, but more significantly, an increase in the economic inactivity rate, which is the number of people who have left the labour market and are not actively looking for work. This has increased more than any other English region and the gap between the North East and the next English region (Yorkshire and the Humber) is significant.

“The North East region has an additional 33,000 working age people who are inactive compared to the same period in 2020. Recent increases in inactivity have been particularly large among the youngest workers, but there have also been increases among those aged 35 to 64.

“There is more work to do to understand the detail behind these changes, but it is now apparent that because the North East region has the highest inactivity rate across all regions in England, we need to work with government to ensure a swift implementation of the Skills White Paper and to ensure the Levelling Up White paper is published and progressed early in 2022 with no further delays.”