What is “worklessness”?
Worklessness is most commonly defined as the number of people claiming Working Age Client Group benefits (WACG) expressed as a percentage of the working age population. Working age is classed as people who are aged between 16 and 59 for women and 16 and 64 for men. Wigan has a working age population of 190,800. Almost 16% of the working age population (29,611 – February 2008, source Department of Work and Pensions) are claiming working age benefits such as Incapacity Benefit, Job Seekers Allowance and Lone Parent Benefit. The recently published Indices of Multiple Deprivation ranked Wigan the ninth worst Local Authority in England in terms of employment. This map (.pdf, 847kb) highlights the areas with the highest concentrations of worklessness.
“What makes Wigan Work?” Strategy
The Council has been co-ordinating a concerted effort from partners and key stakeholders to develop a strategy to reduce the high levels of worklessness in Wigan. On 15 September 2008, the Board of the Wigan Borough Partnership gave final approval to the “What makes Wigan Work Strategy?”
The approved documents are now available for download from our Worklessness Key Documents web page.
To assist Wigan in tackling Worklessness, £21 million has been allocated through Government funding known as ‘Working Neighbourhoods Fund’ for the next 3 years until 2011. Working Neighbourhoods Fund along with other mainstream and discretionary funding will be used to implement the strategy action plans.
If you would like more information, or would like to contribute to discussions on Worklessness then please contact the Policy Team in the Economic Regeneration Office using the contact details below.
If you are experiencing problems downloading any of the documents from the worklessness web pages, you may need to upload the latest version of Adobe Acrobat by visiting the Adobe website (external link). Alternatively, you can contact the Economic Regeneration Office to request documents in an alternative format.
