South Tyne & Wear Valley District

South Tyne & Wear Valley District incorporates the areas of South Tyneside, City of Sunderland, and Co Durham. Its extends from the River Tyne to the Tees valley, and from the North Pennines to the North Sea coast, and incorporates 16 Jobcentres.

The District has a population of 942,300, and the Annual Population Survey to March 07 shows that:

• 68.8% of people of working age are in employment
• 7.7% are unemployed
• 74.5% are economically active
• South Tyne & Wear Valley in 2006-07 had 61,506 (34.8%) of the Region's notified vacancies
• Approximately 62,000 people are claiming Incapacity benefit

Employers and Partners

Strong employer and partnership relations are a key feature of Jobcentre Plus activities. A number of initiatives have been developed to support employers and prospective employees through customised recruitment and training packages. Seaham's Byron Place development led the way for introducing Local Employment Partnerships, gaining hundreds of local jobs for local people.

Co Durham

Co Durham occupies around 860 sq miles, and is mostly rural. Its largest urban centre, Durham City, has a population of just over 37,000. Over 60% of the population live in settlements of less than 10,000 people. Despite its attractive setting, many of the County's settlements suffer from high levels of deprivation, coupled with severe difficulties in accessing jobs, learning and services. Co Durham has a low density of population with medium unemployment. The highest numbers of Jobseekers Allowance customers are concentrated in the Local Authority areas of Durham City, Derwentside, Sedgefield, Easington, and Wear Valley.

The more rural Teesdale and Wear Valley Districts were affected by transport issues, but Durham County Council is working to improve access by getting rural areas better connected to the main highway network in the county, enabling Jobseekers in rural areas to seek employment in a wider area. Durham has one of the highest levels of Incapacity Benefit (35,200) claimants in England, accounting for approximately 12% of the workforce. Co Durham has a tradition of deep coal mining. All of the mines have now closed, and despite financial investment, there remain pockets of high unemployment, social deprivation and economic inactivity. Over the last two years, Jobcentre Plus has introduced Pathways to Work and plays a lead role delivering the Local Area Agreement, which has resulted in a significant reduction of Incapacity Benefit customers.

Employment in Co Durham is strongly reliant on the manufacturing sector (24.5%); and 30.5% of employees are in Public Administration and Education and Health (a 5.9% increase over the past two years).

South Tyneside

South Tyneside covers 25 sq miles, and has a population of approximately 151,500, in South Shields, Jarrow, Hebburn, Boldon, Whitburn and Cleadon.

Once world-renowned for shipbuilding, coal mining and heavy engineering, the area suffered industrial decline in the 1970s and 1980s with severe social and economic consequences, leading to the worst unemployment rate in England and Wales in December 2001. After significant efforts by Jobcentre Plus and its partners to tackle the problems of unemployment and economic regeneration, South Tyneside had climbed 17 places up the national index of multiple deprivation by December 2005.

City of Sunderland

The City of Sunderland has a population of 296,400. Historically, Sunderland relied heavily on n manual industries, such as shipbuilding and coal mining, for its economic prosperity. Following their demise, the City is being transformed to an area providing high quality service-delivery outlets and large-scale automated manufacturing. There has been a rise in the number of call centres and some automated manufacturing companies are following Nissan's example by locating here. With the development of hi-tech offices and purpose-built industrial units, there has been a change to the traditional work, with the vast majority of the workforce undertaking training to pursue different career directions.

In the last 10 years Sunderland's economy has improved, and it has performed better than that of the North East as a whole, and with investment and the birth of new firms, trends are promising. Employment gains have come mainly from the expansion of existing firms, particularly among the larger ones. The largest five industrial sectors account for 72% of the city's manufacturing employment - motor vehicles (22%) mechanical engineering (17%), electrical engineering (16%), and paper, printing, clothing and textiles. The unemployment rate of 3.4% was higher than the English average, and 11.6% of people receiving Incapacity Benefit - almost double the national rate. Since the implementation of Pathways to Work in 2006 in Sunderland the number of people receiving Incapacity Benefit reduced significantly, from 20,270 to 19,040 in May 2007.

For more information, contact Christine Caine, District External Relations Manager, tel 0191 382 4112.