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Teesside towns in top three unemployment stats

Two Teesside towns have ranked in the top three for the number of households with nobody working in the UK.

Worrying new figures, from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), has ranked Middlesbrough as the worst and Hartlepool third, with Glasgow second.

The stats showed that 30.9 per cent of households in Middlesbrough had no-one aged between 16 and 64 in employment during 2012, while Hartlepool was third highest at 29.9 per cent.

It compares to a national average of 18 per cent, while nationally the proportion of UK households where no adult is in work is at its lowest since comparable records began in 1996.

The data shows that the number of workless households in the UK dropped by 182,000 over the year.

The ONS said there were 3.5 million such households in the UK between April and June this year, down from 3.7 million a year earlier.

Middlesbrough had the ninth highest percentage of children in workless homes at 32.2 per cent. Great Yarmough is highest at 35.2 per cent.

Meanwhile, a recent study by Teesside professors said the idea of children, parents and grandparents living a life on benefits was untrue.

A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked whether there really are “three generations of families who have never worked”.

Professor Rob MacDonald from Teesside University helped with the study and fieldwork with families in Middlesbrough.

But he and colleagues were unable to find families with three generations in which no-one had ever worked.

“Even two generations of complete worklessness in the same family is a very rare phenomenon,” said Professor MacDonald .

“We found that families experiencing long-term unemployment remained committed to the value of the work and preferred to be in jobs rather than on benefits.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Martin Walker .