396 people join the dole queue in north Antrim

A total of 396 more people are out of work in the Ballymoney and Moyle area compared with last year, depressing new official figures reveal.

The statistics show that Ballymoney is suffering the most from the economic downturn by registering a 33.7% rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit.

The figures illustrate that in January 2010 there were 936 people without a job in Ballymoney Borough, a rise of 236 on the same month in 2009. It was also revealed by the Statistics Research of the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Investment that 5.1% of the jobless people were of working age.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Of the 936 people in Ballymoney Borough, 770 are males and 166 females.

The number of people unemployed in the Ballymoney Borough rose by 3.5%, or 32, compared to the jobless total for December 2009.

Meanwhile in the Moyle Council area they reported a jobless rise of 31.6% between January 2009 and 2010 - up 160 people to 667 people.

Of these 6.6% were of working age with 520 being men and 147 females.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The number of people unemployed in the Moyle rose by 3.6%, or 23, compared to the jobless total for the previous month.

However, on a happier note, both Moyle and Ballymoney are two of only three councils to have unemployment below 1,000.

REDUNDANCIES

The newly released figures also revealed that 52 people were made redundant in the Ballymoney area in the last twelve months, with none in Moyle.

A spokesperson stated: "There were 4,410 confirmed redundancies in Northern Ireland over the year to 31 January 2010, an increase of 47% compared to the same period in the previous year (2,998).

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"Of these. 147 confirmed redundancies took place during the calendar month of January 2010 and 344 in the previous month of December 2009. This compares to 329 in January 2009.

"The largest number of redundancies occurred in Belfast (1,424), Derry (647) and Larne (319) District council areas."

Related topics: