281 people join the dole queue in north Antrim

The statistics show that Ballymoney is suffering the most from the economic downturn by registering a 21.3% rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit.

The figures illustrate that in March 2010 there were 962 people without a job in Ballymoney Borough, a rise of 169 on the same month in 2009. It was also revealed by the Statistics Research of the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Investment that 5.2% of the jobless people were of working age.

Of the 962 people in Ballymoney Borough, 785 are males and 177 females.

However the number of people unemployed in the Ballymoney Borough dropped by 0.6%, or six, compared to the jobless total for February 2010.

Meanwhile in the Moyle Council area they reported a jobless rise of 20% between March 2009 and 2010 - up 112 to 673 people.

Of these 6.6% were of working age with 525 being men and 148 females.

However the number of people unemployed in the Moyle decreased by 2.0%, or 14, compared to the jobless total for the previous month.

Once again both Moyle and Ballymoney are two of only three councils to have unemployment below 1,000.

REDUNDANCIES

The newly released figures also revealed that 40 people were made redundant in the Ballymoney area in the last twelve months, with none in Moyle.

Looking at the bigger picture a spokesperson stated: "There were 3,681 confirmed redundancies in Northern Ireland over the year to 31 March 2010, a decrease of 5% compared to the same period in the previous year (3,860).

"Of these, 248 confirmed redundancies took place during the calendar month of March 2010 and 154 in the previous month of February 2010. This compares to 671 in March 2009.

"The largest number of redundancies occurred in Belfast (1,117), Derry (633) and Castlereagh (263) District council areas."