The figures are from NOMIS and are also available on my data page.

The longer term impact of the recession is clear, the graph of JSA claims since the recession started gives a clear picture of the long-term impact, a rapid increase as jobs were lost, but a slow recovery afterwards. And, of course, some of those jobs will never return: for example, many public sector jobs, unsustainably funded by massive borrowing are probably gone forever.

During the week I heard a few people downplaying the impact of the recession, but I still think this graph tells a tale of the huge damage that the tale end of the Brown-Blair years unleashed.

With the eurozone in turmoil and the necessary effect of tackling the deficit still to come it might be some time before this is undone.

I’m not sure how much value these posts add, but being anally retentive continue to produce them (and update the data).

September saw another slight fall in the total number of Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claims, 53 (0.9%) fewer people were signing on than in August, bringing the total down to 6,070. The drop against this time last year was 603 people (9.0%)

The figures are not so bright when compared against the pre-recession low, when claims where under 4,000. At the moment claims are still 2,329 (50.0%) higher than pre-recession. Although it should be borne in mind that Wandsworth is still doing remarkably well compared to elsewhere, our claim rate is 2.8%, which compares favourably to rates of 4% and 3.5% for London and Great Britain respectively.

The trend seems healthy, if slow, although with speculation about double dip recessions and, of course, the impact of measures to tackle the deficit this might change.

What is telling is the graph over the course of the recession.

While the trend may be downwards now, there’s still a long way to go before it returns to anything like it was before the recession.

The data I’ve used to create the graphs (and come up with the figures) is on my data page.

The line is starting to look a bit healthier. While the numbers claiming JSA are much higher than they were before the recession it is starting to look like there is a downward trend. In June there was a drop of 244 claims from May (3.7% down) bringing the total to 6,275. Interestingly, for the first time since the recession started the year-on-year comparison shows a reduction. There are 73 (1.1%) fewer people claiming JSA than there were in June 2009.
The graph for the duration of the recession doesn’t look quite as good. It’s clear that there’s still a long way to go, and obviously there has to be some pessimism as the effects of dealing with the deficit make themselves known.

Which set me thinking…

The graph is a comparison of the rate of working-age benefit claims against the recorded rate of violence against the person. It isn’t perfect, the data comes from two difference sources: benefit claims from Nomis are an average from the 2009 quarterly figures, crime from the Home Office’s RDS site and is for 2008-2009 and, because of local government reorganisation some areas couldn’t be compared.

However, I think it gives a clear picture of the relationship. And there’s probably no surprise that, generally the higher the rate of claims (and by extension unemployment) the higher the rate of crime. I will confess I was a little surprised that there wasn’t a tipping point at which recorded violent crime started shooting up. Instead it seems the range of broadens; it would be interesting to know why, for example, Knowsley has a relatively high rate of working age benefits (17.46%) but relatively low violent crime (11 crimes per 1,000 people) and whether that’s a consequence of effective policing and community safety work or something else.

As additionally evidence I would point to the increases in various crime types in Wandsworth, and elsewhere, during the recession.

While very few authorities fall bang on the trend line it rises at approximately 1.2 crimes per 1,000 for every 1% rise in claim rate. To give an example of what this means Wandsworth has a population of 282,000 (according to the Home Office, at least) so a 1% reduction in claim rate could be expected to result in 338 fewer violent crimes in a year if we followed the average trend. Perhaps not that many, but when you consider the costs of those crimes in police time, hopefully court time (processing the offender) and potentially hospital treatment (for the victim) it’s easy to see the that the impact on taxpayers’ money very quickly adds up.

Of course, Wandsworth is mature enough to recognise that the benefits of lower unemployment outweigh the potential loses in grants, but it is an interesting example of the inter-relationship of public services and something that every public service needs to consider carefully while we face the consequences of a huge deficit.

(Given my occasional bleatings about open data, if you are interested feel free to download the data I used to produce the chart and let me know if I’ve got it totally wrong. While I’m confident of the basic premise I caveat it all with the fact that I am not a statistician, and this is a result of procrastination and far too much coffee today.)

However, these threats have to be balanced by government plans to tackle unemployment which (and politically I would say this) I hope are likely to be more effective than the previous governments. To me, the recent announcement that to look at ways of helping people move to areas with more work (it’s the reason I left my home town to move to London) rather than forcing them to stay in an area of unemployment because they live in social housing. Other announcements – which I’ve yet to see condemned by the opposition – of creating a single welfare to work programme and funding providers on outcomes (like getting people into work) rather than the outputs (how many people they see) will hopefully start the transition from JSA and incapacity benefit being a transitional support while people get back in to the workplace rather than the permanent benefit they have become for all too many people.

While there are still nearly 3,000 more people (2,902 to be precise) claiming JSA than before the recession and 545 more than this time last year, the number has dropped by 181 (2.7%) since last month.

Of course the impact of the recession is likely to be long lasting; the impact on long-term unemployment is only just starting to show through and many have predicted a jobless recovering in which businesses recover but do not replace the staff they lost but at the moment is seems the rises in Wandsworth have stopped.