“T hen, after that, it increasingly seems it ’ s cities in the south.
“In the first month between March, which is the last month pre-pandemic, and April, what we see is a big spike in claims, mostly in cities with weaker economies in the north of England and the Midlands ,” she says. Ĭities with stronger economies were able to shield themselves from the worst effects, says Magrini – but only to a point. The fact that northern cities saw unemployment rise first but other areas have now caught up, and in some cases seen higher rates, partly reflects the ability of some cities to weather lockdowns better than others. London – which, despite huge variations between boroughs, had one of the highest median income levels in the country – saw the fourth-highest rise in claimant count rate. The biggest jump in unemployment, however, was in Slough, where the median pay of £28,086 put it in the top third of the country for wages. Overall, there has been a slight “levelling down”, with unemployment rising a touch more in places with higher average incomes.įrom March to October 2020, Blackpool had the highest claimant count rate: the median annual gross pay was £19,486 ($26,063) – well below the UK level of £24,937. A nalysis of the average claimant count rate for March to October shows that while there is still more joblessness in cities where earnings are lower, ones with greater prosperity have seen big spikes in unemployment. When it comes to income levels of cities affected by unemployment, the pandemic has also propelled some wealthier cities up the rankings – partly linked to geography, as incomes are generally higher in southern cities. While the overall general pattern still stands, alongside the places that were struggling are a handful of places in the south-east.” “What we can see now is that the picture is a bit more complicated. “Before the pandemic, there was a very clear north-south divide,” says Elena Magrini, a senior analyst at the Centre for Cities. At the top of the list are the south-eastern towns of Slough, Luton and Crawley, where the number of claimants has almost tripled. Of the 20 cities where the pandemic has sparked the biggest percentage-point rise in people claiming unemployment benefits, half are in the south of the country. In Hull, almost one in ten were receiving support (9%).īut as analysis from the urban-focused think tank Centre for Cities has shown, after initially climbing in the northern cities from March to April, unemployment has since risen sharply in some cities in the south. In October 2020 (the latest available data), more than one in ten working-age people in Blackpool (11%) were claiming benefits for unemployment – up from 7% in February 2020. Such cities are central to the government’s “levelling up” agenda, which seeks to narrow regional disparities between the north and Midlands and the generally better-off south. The Covid-19 pandemic has hit northern cities with weaker economies such as Blackpool and Hull hard. This has, to a large degree, persisted into 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
