The scale of the challenge facing the welsh economy

The Resolution Foundation Think Tank has looked at the ‘jobs deficit’ across the nations and regions of the UK since the financial crash and recession and found that Wales needs 32,000 jobs to get back to pre-recession.

32,000 doesn’t sound a large amount until you look at the Welsh economic data for the past decade.

According to the Office for National Statistics between 1999 – 2013 the welsh economy created 149,000 new jobs that works out on average as 10,632 jobs per year.

So on those figures alone it will take until at least 2016 to reach 2008 jobs levels, that’s 3 years without any additional job growth in an economy that has above average unemployment.

The study also showed Wales also had the second lowest number of people in work in 2008 before the crash and recession at 56.5% the only areas with less people in work was the North East with 55.6%. The up side if you can call it that is that Wales only lost 1.3% of jobs during the 2003 – 2013 period.

The full press release with figures is HERE

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