The monthly update of the Claimant Count and ONS Jobseeker's Allowance series took place at 09:30 on 17 June 2015 with the release of new data for May 2015. The full list of updates is given below.

Changes to Claimant Count Definition

From this month ONS have changed the definition of the Claimant Count to include all out of work Universal Credit claimants. More details on this change were provided in a previous news article.

Only one dataset on Nomis has been updated at this time in line with the new claimant count definition: Claimant Count seasonally adjusted. The figures in this dataset, which are available for regions and countries of the UK, have been revised to include Universal Credit claimants from May 2013 when the new benefit was introduced. At the same time the figures have undergone their annual seasonal adjustment review.

None of the other datasets will reflect the new definition. These datasets have been renamed to indicate that they are datasets of claimants of Jobseeker's Allowance and do not contain the Universal Credit claimants that are now included in the headline Claimant Count datasets.

Accessing the data

Headline statistics: The headline national and regional figures are available from the regional and national profile or as a spreadsheet download (xls).

For local areas use either the local authority profile, parliamentary constituency profile, or ward profile depending on the type of area for which you want figures.

Detailed statistics: The complete datasets updated in this release are available under the claimant count series in the query data tool.

Jobseeker's Allowance Claimant Count

New May 2015 data has been added to:
  • Claimant Count seasonally adjusted
  • Jobseeker's Allowance with rates and proportions
  • Jobseeker's Allowance by age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance by age and duration with proportions
  • Jobseeker's Allowance stocks and flows by ethnicity, age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance by occupation
  • Jobseeker's Allowance by occupation, age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance flows
  • Jobseeker's Allowance flows by age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance flows by occupation
  • Jobseeker's Allowance flows - seasonally adjusted
  • Jobseeker's Allowance on-flows by occupation and age
  • Jobseeker's Allowance off-flows by occupation, age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance off-flows by reason, age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance off-flows by reason and occupation
  • Jobseeker's Allowance off-flows by reason, occupation, age and duration
  • Jobseeker's Allowance seasonally adjusted

New April 2015 data has been added to:

  • Jobseeker's Allowance stocks and flows by ethnicity, age and duration