Highest rate of economic inactivity – ONS figures

THE North East still has the lowest proportion of people in work despite a slight fall in the region’s unemployment rate in new figures.

- 

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the region’s unemployment rate stood at 5% in the three months to the end of April, down from 5.1% last month. But 28.1% of the region’s working age population was classed as 'economically inactive, another reduction from last month but by far the highest level in the UK.