Basingstoke Claimant Count Hits 3,325, Highest Since 2021

3,325 people in Basingstoke and Deane were claiming benefits principally because they are out of work in August. That is the highest figure the borough has recorded since September 2021, when the count was still falling out of the pandemic.

The figure comes from the Office for National Statistics and was published through nomis on 15 September. It is up 90 on July and up 165 on August last year, a rise of 5.2 per cent.

It is worth being precise about the rest of it, because the headline number hides the actual story. Almost none of the annual increase came from people in the middle of their working lives.

The rise is under-25s and over-50s

The 740 under-25s is the highest count for that age group since July 2021. Five years ago they were about a fifth of all claimants in the borough. They are now 22 per cent of them, and the group has grown every month since May.

The 25 to 49 band, which is more than half the total, did not move at all on the year. The over-50s rose by 55.

Across the South East as a whole, the claimant count rose 3.7 per cent on the year and the under-25 count rose 11.7 per cent. Basingstoke and Deane’s under-25 count rose 18.4 per cent, well ahead of both.

How that compares across Hampshire

The count on its own says little without the size of the working-age population behind it. The ONS also publishes the figure as a share of residents aged 16 to 64, and on that measure Basingstoke and Deane sits at 2.7 per cent.

Seven of Hampshire’s eleven districts are lower and three are higher:

Two things stand out from the same table read across a year.

Basingstoke and Deane had the largest increase of any Hampshire district in absolute terms, 165 more claimants than in August 2025. Eastleigh was next on 140, then Rushmoor on 100 and Hart on 95.

As a percentage, the borough’s 5.2 per cent rise was the third fastest of the eleven, behind Hart at 9.4 per cent and Eastleigh at 7.5 per cent. Havant was the only Hampshire district where the count fell, down 150 or 5.8 per cent.

Set against the wider picture, the borough still looks comparatively comfortable. The South East as a whole is at 3.1 per cent and the United Kingdom at 3.9 per cent, both above Basingstoke and Deane. The borough is not an unemployment blackspot. It is a place where the number has been rising steadily for two and a half years and has now passed a level it last saw in 2021.

What this number is, and what it is not

This matters, because the claimant count gets quoted as an unemployment rate and it is not one. The ONS is explicit in its quality report:

“The Claimant Count does not attempt to measure unemployment, which is a concept defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as all those who are out of work, actively seeking work and available to start work.”

What it does measure is “the number of people claiming benefits principally for the reason of being unemployed, based on administrative data from the benefits system”. Since Universal Credit, that includes people who are working but on low earnings and still required to look for more hours. So the count can rise without a single redundancy.

Two further cautions from the same document. Every figure in this release is rounded to the nearest five. And the Universal Credit part of the count “allows for revisions to the data for one previous month”, so the August figure of 3,325 is the one most likely to move when the September numbers appear.

The next release is due in the middle of October.

What it means for you

If you are out of work in the borough, the practical point buried in these figures is who else is. The under-25 count has risen for four straight months and is at a five-year high, which is the group that usually moves first when employers stop recruiting rather than start cutting.

If you are 25 to 49, the count for your age group is flat on the year. The pressure in these numbers is at the two ends.

Jobcentre Plus support and Universal Credit claims are handled by the Department for Work and Pensions, not the borough council. The council’s own anti-poverty work is on a separate track: its Anti-Poverty Strategy Action Plan is scheduled to come back to councillors in January 2027, as set out on the agenda for this month’s Resident Services Committee.

All the figures above come from ONS table NM_162_1 through nomis, for local authority district E07000084, not seasonally adjusted.

More Basingstoke data: house prices and council tax bands.