Research conducted by the Party of Wales has found that there are four people on Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) for every Job Centre vacancy in the country.
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth said while the drop in unemployment rate was to be welcomed, the statistic does not hide the fact that there is a real jobs shortage in Wales which needs to be addressed urgently.
Statistics have shown that there are 62,800 people currently claiming JSA in Wales. Meanwhile, just 15,215 vacancies are being advertised in job centres across Wales.
Mr ap Iorwerth, Shadow Minister for Economy and Enterprise, said: “There is a lot of rhetoric from the Westminster coalition, as well as from Labour in Westminster, about reducing the UK’s social security bill. Unfortunately, there is not as much emphasis on job creation and giving people the opportunity to get off benefits and into work.
“When you see that in Wales there are four people claiming JSA for every job centre vacancy, it is clear that the three main UK political parties are putting the ‘cart before the horse’ when they talk about reducing the welfare budget.
“A proactive and all-encompassing job creation strategy, as advocated by the Party of Wales in our Plan C document, would be an effective means of bringing good quality jobs to areas that are in desperate need of them.”
He added: “The Welsh Government should also play its part and adopt some of our ideas, particularly on increasing local procurement to plug the gap in the jobs market. We have shown how nearly 50,000 jobs could be created by this procurement policy alone.
“If this is achieved then the Social Security Bill will fall alongside falling unemployment.”
