Paul Carbert, policy adviser, North East England Chamber of Commerce said: “More positive news this month and a continuation of the recent trend, with healthy falls in unemployment and rises in employment. The unemployment rate for the North East this quarter is at a record low. As the labour market tightens, we need to ensure that workers can acquire the skills required by businesses to drive forward growth.”

Chamber member razorblue’s managing director, Dan Kitchen, has seen the company’s workforce increase by 35% over the past 18 months and is confident of seeing this trend continue in 2018 and beyond.  “The figures released today reflect our experience.  2017 saw us continue to meet demand and enter new markets, meaning we exceeded the growth targets we set ourselves and created a significant number of jobs. Increasingly we find that businesses are looking for a single, professional partner to manage all of their IT, cloud, connectivity, telecoms and business system requirements and we are in an ideal position to meet that need.

“We have a great team here and we are adding talented individuals all the time. Our growth reflects our commitment to exceptional service levels, our ability to create innovative business solutions and becoming an invaluable IT partner for our clients.  We are looking forward to an even better 2018 as we remain true to our core principle of putting client needs first.”

Ends

Editors notes:

• Employment in the North East stands at 1,229,000 or 72.2% – an increase of 11,000 over the quarter and 34,000 over the year. This compares to a rate of 75.3% nationally.
• North East unemployment stands at 68,000 or 5.2% – a fall of 7,000 over the quarter and 20,000 over the year. This compares to a rate of 4.3% nationally.
• The claimant count stands at 54,900 or 4.4% in the North East. The national claimant count rate is 2.4%.

This data covers the period September 2017 to November 2017. The next release is on 21 February 2018.