Two thirds of job cuts hit poorest

The burden of rising unemployment in England is falling mainly on the most deprived areas and threatens to undermine the government’s anti-poverty drive, Financial Times research has shown. An analysis of people signing on for the jobseeker’s allowance in the first four months of this year indicates nearly two-thirds of the 344,000 increase was in areas with above-average levels of deprivation. This confirms other data suggesting this downturn, far from being a mainly middle-class recession focused on south-east England, is primarily hitting low-income workers in the traditional industrial heartlands such as the Midlands and northern England. Unemployment, currently at 2.2 million, is likely to continue to rise for several months, the FT says.