Fewer claiming benefits in Sunderland
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows an estimated 115,497 people in the city were on company payrolls in December – 823 more than in November and the highest increase since records began in 2014.
The figure was also up from 109,928 in December 2020 and was above the pre-pandemic level of 112,143 workers on company payrolls in December 2019.
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Hide AdThe number of workers on UK payrolls also jumped by a record 184,000 month-on-month, to 29.5 million.
Separate ONS figures also show there was a fall in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in Sunderland last month.
Around 9,810 people were on out-of-work benefits as of December 9 – down by 3,545 from the month before – and meaning 5.7% of the area's working population sought support in December.
Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said: “Those reporting they’d recently been made redundant fell to their lowest since records began more than a quarter of a century ago and, while job vacancies reached a new high in the last quarter of 2021, they are now growing more slowly than last summer.”
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Hide AdThe data also shows the median monthly salary for payrolled workers in Sunderland rose from £1,857 in November to £1,872 at the end of the year.
National average wage growth, including bonuses, was 4.2% in the three months to November but with inflation hitting 5.1% in November, real wages failed to keep up with the rising cost of living for the first time since July 2020.