Reaction to today’s ONS regional labour market statistics

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership’s (North East LEP) Strategy and Policy Director, Richard Baker, has commented on today’s regional labour market statistics, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

“Today’s figures show that our economy remains fragile, despite a small amount of economic improvement since April.

There has been a large increase in unemployment in the North East region between June and August, which is extremely concerning – especially as we are faced with ongoing and tightened restrictions over the coming months.

The North East region including the North East LEP and the Tees Valley LEP areas, now has the highest unemployment rate of the English regions at 6.6 percent and we are seeing this follow through to more people in our region claiming unemployment-related benefits.

Our businesses continue to work hard to keep their teams together, but we are faced with a stop-start recovery, where ongoing support will be critical, for business. We welcome government’s decision extend the support available to the economy. We will be monitoring its impact closely as we move into the winter.

“Strategic leadership and a strong partnership with government is more critical than ever – we need to ensure that support for businesses is reflective of the need of our region.”

 

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