Cornwall jobless total up by 93%

Roadshows have been on to take advice out to job-hunters

Unemployment in Cornwall is more than 90% higher than a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The number of people claiming Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) in the county up to the end of June was about 8,000 people.

The figures saw a slight fall between May and June as seasonal work in the county picked up.

However, they were still up 93% on the same period in 2008, equalling 2.6% of the county's working population.

'Evenly spread'

The overall UK rate of JSA claimants among the UK working age population is 4.1%.

BBC South West business correspondent Neil Gallacher said: "The joblessness seems to be fairly evenly spread out across the economy, rather than concentrated into especially big cataclysmic lay-offs."

The increase in JSA claimants had led to some changes in approach from the local authorities, including advice roadshows.

John Larke of the Cornwall Development Company run by the county council, operates some of the roadshows.

He said: "If there's a really major redundancy, such as [china clay company] Imerys a couple of years ago, we take this one-stop-shop to those people."

The roadshows are now being taken to several towns in an attempt to reach workers from smaller firms where redundancies might normally go unnoticed.