Derry & Strabane unemployment: Facts speak for themselves

The new labour market report shows the number of Jobseekers' Allowance/ Universal Credit claimants is higher than everywhere else in the north.

Recently, we reported how life expectancy here is also falling, while Derry & Strabane has the highest rate of economic inactivity, due in no small part to the many people here living with a disability or chronic illness.

Pile on top of all that the soaring costs of everything from mortgages, second hand cars and energy bills to the weekly shop and fuel, more people having to use food banks, the extreme difficulties in accessing healthcare and the massive waiting lists for surgery and what emerges is a very bleak picture indeed of where we are today. In fact, we seem to be going backwards.

We know from report after report that when crises such as those mentioned above occur, it is the poorest regions which suffer greatest.

Fighting for every scrap is nothing here new but it shouldn’t have been this way in the past and it shouldn’t be this way now. We need to see serious investment in our area, and crucially, investment that makes a real and tangible difference to the lives of men, women and children across our region. There is some good work happening, but we need to see it amplified, accelerated and added to if we ever to shake off these unenviable and unfair league topping titles and labels.