How many people near you claim unemployment-related benefits?

Highest areas

Lowest areas

Ranked by change over 12 months, percentage points, highest first; ties in alphabetical order. Areas without a value are not ranked.

What this map shows

361 of 361 local authority areas have a current value for all claimants (change over 12 months, percentage points), Change over 12 months: July 2025 to July 2026. Classes are quantiles of the areas with data, computed on the server, so the same link always gives the same legend.

Everyone the count covers: Jobseeker's Allowance claimants and Universal Credit claimants required to look for work.

Take the data

• Download all areas (CSV)
• JSON
• GeoJSON
• Permalink: https://civometry.com/maps/claimant-count/all/change-12m
• PNG
• SVG

Embed (static map with title, period, official source and a link back):

<iframe src="https://civometry.com/embed/maps/claimant-count/all/change-12m?level=lad&measure=change_count" width="720" height="700" style="border:0;max-width:100%" title="All claimants, change over 12 months, percentage points, by local authority: Change over 12 months: July 2025 to July 2026 | Civometry" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Source and method

Data

Claimant count by sex and age (Nomis) (ONS).

Denominator

None is applied here. The ONS divides its own count by the area's residents aged 16 to 64 and publishes the percentage; this layer draws that published figure. Claimant count by sex and age (Nomis).

Coverage

The claimant count is published for every local authority in the United Kingdom, so this is the one local measure here that covers England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland alike.

Boundaries

ONS Open Geography Portal generalised boundaries, Open Government Licence v3.0 (2025-05 BGC v2 LAD_MAY_2025_UK_BGC_V2).

Basemap

Ordnance Survey Maps API (Light), used under the OS Data Hub terms.

Formula

newest published percentage − the percentage published twelve months earlier

Stale areas

An area whose newest published month is earlier than the newest any area carries is shown as no current data, with both months named. Nothing is carried forward.

Method

Methodology

What this does not measure

The unemployment rate, which the Labour Force Survey measures as a share of the economically active population, not of all residents of working age.

The claimant count is an administrative count of people claiming unemployment-related benefits, published monthly by the ONS from Department for Work and Pensions systems. It is not the unemployment rate: someone unemployed who does not claim is not counted, and someone working few hours who does claim is. Who it counts has changed with the benefit system. Universal Credit widened the group of claimants required to look for work, and it rolled out area by area between 2013 and 2018, so a change over those years mixes two systems and areas reached the new system at different times; the ONS says the series is not comparable across the rollout. The latest month is revised in later releases. Figures are counts of claims, rounded by the publisher, and are not seasonally adjusted here.

The claimant count is an administrative count of claims, not the unemployment rate: someone out of work who does not claim is not counted, and someone working few hours who claims Universal Credit and must look for more work is. Universal Credit rolled out area by area between 2013 and 2018, so a change measured across those years mixes two systems and areas reached the new one at different dates. No direction is set for this layer, because a fall in claims is not by itself good news.

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