The parts of Herefordshire with the highest numbers of jobseekers have been named.

The highest-placed council ward in the county is Hinton & Hunderton, lying south of the Wye in Hereford, with 140 jobseekers, followed by Widemarsh in the north of the city on 125, Leominster East on 120, and Newton Farm, to the southwest of the city, on 115.

This is according to October’s monthly monitoring report from Herefordshire Council’s Intelligence Unit, which combined data on Jobseeker's Allowance with those on Universal Credit (UC) required to seek work.

The figure for Widemarsh has shown the biggest jump since March 2020, up by 45 claimants, it says.

In all, 2,560 people in Herefordshire claimed unemployment-related benefits in September – a rate of 2.3 per cent, significantly lower than the 3.8 per cent for England as a whole.

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Since 2017, the means-tested Universal Credit has combined and replaced Jobseeker's Allowance, Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit and Housing Benefit.

However so-called “new style” Jobseeker's Allowance remains as a separate benefit alongside UC.

While overall numbers claiming UC in the county have dropped back slightly from the pandemic peak, they are still well above pre-Covid levels, the council’s data shows.

The wards with the highest number of UC claimants make up a similar picture to that for unemployment, with 650 in Hinton & Hunderton, 640 in Newton Farm, 490 in Leominster East, 450 in Widemarsh and 430 in Red Hill to the south of the city.

“Generally, those wards with the highest numbers of claimants before the pandemic still have the highest numbers now,” the report says.

Last month there were 11,980 UC claimants in Herefordshire overall, only slightly below the peak of 12,390 seen in April 2021, but well above the 5,980 of March 2020 on the eve of the pandemic.

It appears from these figures that Covid has had a greater impact on the figures in Herefordshire than elsewhere in the country.

But at 11 per cent, the county still has a lower overall share of the working-age population on UC than England as a whole, for which the figure is 14 per cent.

Meanwhile, the number of people in Herefordshire claiming Pension Credit, for those of pensionable age on low income, has fallen steadily by nearly 20 per cent over the past four years, to now stand at 4,060 claimants.

Separate official data published this week showed the national unemployment rate has fallen to 3.5 per cent, its lowest in half a century. But this appears to have been down to a jump in people leaving the labour market rather than taking up jobs.

As a consequence, the number of people seeking work per job vacancy is at a record low, the Office for National Statistics said.

The UK economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in August.

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