Unemployment: North East
(asked on 21st October 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect of job losses in (a) Stockton North, (b) the Tees Valley Combined Authority area and (c) the North East on levels of child poverty in each respective area.
Protecting families with low incomes during the COVID-19 outbreak is of upmost importance to this government. The policies implemented in response to the outbreak, such as the Job Retention Schemes and the increases to the welfare budget have made a huge difference, particularly to those with low incomes. This was shown in HMT’s recently published distributional analysis about the Impact of COVID-19 on working household incomes. This publication shows that the lowest income decile of working households has seen no fall in income due to Government measures that have been put in place. This is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/impact-of-covid-19-on-working-household-incomes-distributional-analysis-as-of-may-2020
The Government launched its Plan for Jobs in response the impact of the pandemic. Progress can be seen in the recent launch of Kickstart, the new Job Entry Target Support (JETS), an extension of the Work and Health Programme and the expansion of the Sector-based Work Academy Programme. A New Job Finding Support Service, involving the private sector recruiters, will also be introduced.
National Statistics on the number and percentage of children in low income are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication. The rates of children in absolute poverty in the North East region in the three years to 18/19 has decreased, both before and after housing costs, compared to the three years to 09/10.
These statistics can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-199495-to-201819
The Department now publishes supplementary official statistics on the number of children in low income families at constituency level. Children in Low Income Families data is published annually.
The latest figures from 2014/15 to 2018/19 can be found at: