Job centres take on 1,000-plus to cope with West Midlands increase in unemployment, MPs told

Oct 21 2009 by Jonathan Walker, Birmingham Post

Job centres have taken on more than 1,000 staff to help cope with the massive increase in unemployment in the West Midlands, MPs have been told.

The job service is facing an influx of professionals and executives – who have little experience of looking for work, and may never have been in a job centre before.

Margaret Tovey, Customer Services Director with Jobcentre Plus in the West Midlands, said staff had received training on how to help middle-class job-hunters hit by the recession.

The region continues to have the highest unemployment rate in the country with 281,000 people out of work, an unemployment rate of 10.4 per cent.

This is more than double the 112,000 of 12 months ago, and the rate is higher than in any other part of the UK, including English regions, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ms Tovey was giving evidence to the West Midlands Select Committee, a House of Commons committee investigating the effects of the economic downturn on the region. She told MPs: “We have actually taken on 1,110 staff since the recession started to bite. Most of these staff are for front-line services. Most are fixed-term contracts of 18 months’ duration.”

The jobs service was also planning to open 16 sites on a temporary basis, she said. They would operate for up to two years. Opening hours had increased at existing job centres. She said: “We in the West Midlands have had to do that, and opened up on Saturdays and Sundays and in the evenings as well, to cope with the increased volumes.”

Job centres were helping professionals who had little experience of searching for work, she said.

But MP James Plaskitt (Lab Warwick & Leamington) said that he had been approached by constituents who complained they had not received useful help from Jobcentre Plus.

Mick Laverty, chief executive of Advantage West Midlands, warned that the region still suffered from an “underlying, fundamental challenge” of having too few graduate workers.