Time series data for unemployment benefit in Community Insight

Explore how unemployment changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown with times series data in Community Insight. 

The Department for Work and Pensions publishes Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) every month. In turn, we update the data in Community Insight to show the latest monthly snapshot. 

Given the dramatic changes to unemployment and the effects that it may have on your communities, we have added in the previous 3 months unemployment benefit data as individual indicators, so that you can see the month-on-month change for your areas. These datasets can be displayed on the map and downloaded for your stock groups.

Alongside the usual monthly updates for Unemployment (June 2020), we have added 3 historical time-points for the indicator Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit):

  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020

How to view this data on Community Insight

The map

  1. Click on the Data button
  2. Search Unemployment using the search bar
  3. You will see the most recent Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) indicator for the month of June 2020 and the 3 historic timepoints listed beneath

Click on image to see full size

Download the data for all 4 timepoints for your stock groups

  1. Click on the Data button
  2. Search Unemployment using the search bar
  3. You will see the most recent Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) indicator for the month of June 2020 and the 3 historic timepoints listed beneath
  4. Select the first time point
  5. Click on the Info button
  6. Click Data for your areas (this will open up a popup with data for your stock groups)
  7. Click Download this dataset in CSV format
  8. Repeat this process for the other 3 timepoints 

Click on image to see full size

Please note in the Data for your areas popup the table of data has two columns. The first column shows the percentage figure, the second column shows the count data. When you export the data to a CSV, only the percentage figure is exported. Adding the count data to the export is one of our development priorities and will be coming soon. 

On the Dashboard

You can only view the latest time point for Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) on the dashboard

In the reports 

This data has not been added to the reports. The reports do however already contain a chart that shows how Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) has changed since 2004 (page 10).

Figure: Unemployment benefit (Jobseekers Allowance/Universal Credit) claimants Source: Department for Work and Pensions

Figure: Unemployment benefit (Jobseekers Allowance/Universal Credit) claimants
Source: Department for Work and Pensions

Would you like to see more time series data in Community Insight?

We are looking at options to include more time series data within Community Insight. Please email support@ocsi.co.uk with any suggestions for what would be useful and to register interest in taking part in future user research on this topic. 

Removed Monthly Change in Unemployment Indicator

We have removed the indicator Monthly Change in Unemployment. The new indicators for Unemployment benefit (JSA and Universal credit) for the last four months supersede this indicator. For those groups who had it assigned to a theme, it will no longer be available. 

Further reading

If you are interested in how COVID-19 has affected employment and the economy more broadly, take a look at some of our recent analysis: