John Welcomes New Employment Figures

John Battle, Labour MP for Leeds West, welcomed today’s unemployment figures.

“Nationally we have the lowest unemployment for a generation – you have to go back to 1975 last time this few people were out of work.

“Unemployment in Leeds as a whole is falling too – less than half the number of people are signing on than when the Labour Government came to power in 1997. And in my Leeds West constituency where more people than average in our city are out of work, unemployment is the lowest it’s been for twenty years and that’s very good news.

“It’s a combination of the success of Chancellor Gordon Brown in running the national economy, Leeds’s economic success, and the excellent work of the Council’s training department giving local people the skills to take up the new jobs being created by the economic growth.

“I do hope the coalition now running Leeds City Council will respect and continue to support the work that the Council has been doing for years training and skilling people for real jobs, not least through Sure Start and the Family Learning Centres. People in the city of Leeds can’t afford to lose them.”

Claimant count unemployment figures for October released today by the Office of National Statistics show:

Leeds claimant count unemployment fell by 359 to 10,969 (2.4%)

Leeds West claimant count unemployment fell by 64 to 1,512 (2.7%)

©John Battle MP 17th November 2004