Limavady still at top of the jobless charts

THE number of people claiming unemployment benefit in Limavady still remains one of the highest figures in Northern Ireland.

Figures released last week name the borough along with Londonderry and Strabane as one of the hardest hit area in terms of job losses. But the figures, which detail the claimant count by percentage of the working age population, have showed that the rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has actually slowed dramatically for the month of February. The seasonally adjusted number of people joining the dole queues increased by 100 to 55,700 over the month, amounting to 6.4% of the workforce, the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment said. That compared to a revised rise of 900 in January. The news was even better for the UK as a whole, with the claimant count falling by 2% or 32,300 to 1.59 million, the biggest monthly reduction since the end of 1997. The highest percentage increases in claimant levels in the year to February were in Castlereagh, Newry and Mourne and Newtownabbey. The number of people in jobs also fell in the most recent quarter, dropping 2,890 over the quarter and 20,840 over the year. The latest figures did show a drop in the number of people of working age classed as economically inactive, but DETI noted the Northern Ireland rate of 28% is still considerably higher than the UK average of 21.5% and was the highest of the 12 UK regions. Economists have predicted that unemployment in the province is likely to keep rising until at least the middle of 2010.