Shropshire business leader warns against complacency as unemployment falls in the region
A business leader has warned against complacency after new figures showed the number of people out of work in the region fell in the three months to March.
Despite welcoming the fall in unemployment as well as the number of people claiming benefits, Mandy Thorn MBE, chair of the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership, said it was too early to tell how well the economic recovery is going.
It comes as the unemployment figure for the West Midlands – including Shropshire – was down 11,000 from the previous quarter to 169,000 with the claimant total falling by 4,695 to 266,435 last month.
“The fact that the number of people claiming unemployment benefits fell last month and the number of workers on payrolls increased is very welcome news," Mrs Thorn said.
“We have seen a number of announcements from companies across the Marches looking to recruit new staff in recent weeks which is an incredibly positive sign that things are moving in the right direction.
“But we cannot afford to be complacent and think that the battle is won.
"We need to see how our retail, hospitality and visitor economy businesses recover and whether we will see furloughed staff returning to work before we can be sure that we are moving in the right direction.
"We know that there is a major recovery programme needed to get us back to where we were before the pandemic began and to then begin growing the economy again.
“One of the things we are doing as a LEP is asking the local business community a series of questions about the pandemic and some of the support measures which have been in place, so that we have the evidence we need to implement a truly effective recovery programme.
“The more businesses that take our survey – at mlep.co.uk/poll – the better informed that programme will be as we move forward.”
