Northern England, Wales, the Midlands and Scotland have all suffered the largest rises in unemployment. It is the manufacturing and heavy industry areas that have seen most distress.
Official figures published by research consultancy the Work Foundation showed that Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Hull, Manchester, Bradford, Kirklees, Liverpool and Bristol were the worst effected areas.
Car company Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is to create up to 600 jobs under a £700m investment plan. This expansion comes not long after the company was bought by Tata Motors from Ford for £1.7bn.
The recruitment drive aims to attract engineers to work on new technology and product devlopment programmes, althoguht there will also be jobs in purchasing, finance and human resources. Also a new programme for more than 80 graduates to join the business in Spetember is being launched.
Most of the jobs will be at the firm’s devlopment centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire. JLR currently employs some 16,000 people at plants in Solihull and Liverpool, as well as the devlopment centres at Gaydon and Coventry.
IT and technology company Wipro is set to create hundreds of new jobs when it opens a new facility near London. It is planning a new software development facility in the south-east, probably outside London.
Wipro plans to increase the number of jobs at its Reading base by 200 to reach full capacity. It will then look to open another delivery centre in the UK, at a location yet to be decided but current considerations include Birmingham, Warwick and Edinburgh. It is thought the office will be opened in the next two years.
