Article by Gareth Thomas, National Assembly for Wales Research Service
The Research Service has refreshed (and renamed) our monthly unemployment briefing so that it now covers the labour market more broadly. As well as looking at the headline unemployment figures, this allows us to analyse a wider range of data than previously. The labour market briefing includes the latest data on people in employment, whether they work in the public or private sector, and on people who are neither in work or looking for work (the economically inactive). It also now has more data at constituency level – and you can look at how unemployment in a constituency has changed over time in our revamped interactive maps on the Constituency Support page. To give a flavour of the new content, did you know that:
- Wales has the highest ILO unemployment rate of the UK nations, at 6.7% in January to March 2015;
- 69.4% of people in Wales aged 16-64 are in work in January to March 2015, although the working age employment rate has decreased over the past year; and
- Brecon and Radnorshire has the highest working age employment rate of the Welsh constituencies, at 78.3% in January to December 2014. Montgomeryshire has the lowest ILO unemployment rate of the Welsh constituencies, at 2.4% over the same period.
