The economy in the UK is on shaky ground, but imagine living in Liverpool, Glasgow or Nottingham where one in three households have had no one employed for two years in a row. These three areas of the UK lead the official figures for unemployment as reported by the Office for National Statistics.
It is reported that last year in Liverpool, more than 31% of households have never had a person with a paying job. This is the hardest hit in the country with Nottingham and Glasgow just behind those figures. This is the second year running where all three cities had the highest concentration of jobless households and to compound matters, Liverpool was at the top of joblessness for five of seven consecutive years.
The leading reason for being without a job in Liverpool was illness or disability which is consistent with the national average of reasons why people remain unemployed, but the staggering statistic is the sheer number of people who have never had a job and have no prospects on the horizon. Nottingham, on the other hand, reports that jobless households list the reason as illness or disability 43% of the time. This is well above the national average.
On the other side of the coin, those in Surrey, Oxfordshire, North East Moray and Aberdeen are amongst the areas with the highest rate of employment at about 11% unemployed. Statistically, the UK reports 18.9% of all households are jobless and the areas with the closest figures to the national average are Monmouthshire & Newport and Somerset.
Although some households are jobless because of early retirement, those in the South West have the highest concentration of households listing this as a reason at 27% which compares to those in London reporting early retirement at a 10% concentration.
