£1.4bn goes begging as jobseekers fail to claim allowances

More than half a million people who were entitled to claim jobseekers allowance failed to do so in 2004-05, according to the latest government statistics.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed that there was some evidence of a small decrease in take-up of jobseekers allowance between 2003-04 and 2004-05, leaving £1.4bn left unclaimed.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

Take-up appeared to be lowest among single females.

There were 530,000 recipients of jobseeker’s allowance in 2004-05, receiving £1.7bn of benefit.