Unemployment - up in Yardley & women worst affected

Despite the headlines showing some improvement in the unemployment figures, there's still a lot of devils hiding in the detail. Birmingham has a small increase in JSA claimants year on year, up 0.2%. While that is statistically insignificant, that still means that 179 more men and 1402 more women are out of work than in June 2012 - a fact that is very significant to those people and their families. In Yardley, the overall figure was up by 0.2%, with an increase in women's unemployment of 0.5% set against a drop in male unemployment of 0.2% - that's a net 108 more people out of work in our constituency.

Nationally, it is worth noting that the figures also show a year on year drop of 120,000 in the number of full time employees, continuing the trend towards part time work. At the same time, the number of self-employed people rose by 132,000, accounting for a decent chunk of the change.

These figures are hardly a measure of confidence and - much like the other economic indicators - show no signs of a sustained recovery. With more bad news expected next week with the growth figures likely to show a continued recession, we're still bouncing along the bottom - pretty much as I predicted, sadly.