YORKSHIRE has joined the North-East in recording a double digit unemployment rate, official figures have shown.

Ten per cent of those eligible to work in Yorkshire and Humberside were classed as being unemployed in the past quarter – May to July this year – just behind the North-East’s 10.4 per cent figure, still the highest in the UK.

And while the number of people out of work in the North-East fell by 11,000 to 134,000; in Yorkshire and Humberside it increased by 23,000 to 272,000.

Despite the apparent improved picture in the North-East, Kevin Rowan, regional secretary of the Northern Trades Union Congress, said it remained one of the hardest places to find work in the country.

The TUC said it was home to two of England’s top five unemployment blackspots – Hartlepool , where there were 16 jobseekers per vacancy and Middlesbrough, which had 13 jobseekers per vacancy.

It also said employment – its preferred indicator – in the North-East had only gone up by 1,000 over the quarter to 1,159,000, while male full-time workers had seen a decline in pay of £20 per week from less than a year ago.

Mr Rowan said: “Of the few jobs being created, many are low-paid, low-skilled and insecure. This is not a recipe for a sustained recovery. The drop in wages is another serious squeeze on working people at a time when many can’t afford it.”

Ross Smith, director of policy at the North-East Chamber of Commerce, said: “Unemployment remains significantly higher than two years ago, but appears to be on a downward trend and is again moving quicker here than for the rest of the UK.

“The slight caveat is that this decrease seems to have stalled both regionally and nationally this month, but longer term trends are more reliable and the 11,000 fall in the North-East over the quarter is particularly good news.”

London accounted for 91,000 of the 236,000 rise in the number of people in work nationally in the quarter to July – the largest quarterly rise for two years – thanks in part to the “Olympics effect”.

The total number of people now in work stands at 29.6 million.

Meanwhile, the overall jobless total fell by 7,000 to 2.59 million, an unemployment rate of 8.1 per cent.

Employment Minister Mark Hoban said a million more people were working in the private sector than in May 2010.

He said: “We will continue to work hard to provide the conditions for businesses to grow and provide people with the support they need to get back to work.”