Crawley sees slight rise in young jobless total

Crawley has seen a small rise in the amount of young people out of work, according to official figures.
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In figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Wednesday (May 18), 31.58 million people were in work across the UK between January and March this year.

The total is an increase of around 44,000 on the previous quarter (October to December 2015) and also a rise of 409,000 on January to March last year.

Crawley’s overall jobless total has dropped.

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According to the ONS 1,005 people were out of work in April 2016. The figures shows a drop of two per cent over the last month and a 13 per cent fall on last year.

Of this total 140 are youngsters, 20 more than last month.

It shows a rise of 17 per cent on March 2016 but a drop of 26 per cent on April last year.

Simon Hobday, relationship manager at the Jobcentre Plus, said only time would tell as to whether this would become a continuing trend in Crawley.

He said: “It’s against the trend for the rest of West Sussex. But the overall figure is the right way.”

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Elsewhere Horsham reported the highest monthly drop of 8.1 per cent, whilst Haywards Heath recorded 4.3 per cent fall.

West Sussex as a whole saw unemployment fall to 3,855, a decrease of 4.1 per cent over the month and a yearly drop of 18.8 per cent.

The county’s young jobless total was down two per cent on March 2016 to 530, which was also a drop of 41 per cent on last year.

Mr Hobday said there were still areas the centre was struggling to find recruitment for.

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He said: “The sectors struggling to recruit are retail and construction.

“We have lots of vacancies we are trying to fill at Tesco and Tesco.com.

“It is proving quite challenging at the moment which is a nice challenging but from an employers point of view it is very difficult.”

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