Claimant count — Bolton
9,950, latest July 2026.
9,950 people were claiming Universal Credit while required to seek work, or Jobseeker's Allowance.
What these terms mean
- Claimant count
- The number of people claiming Universal Credit while required to look for work, or claiming Jobseeker's Allowance. It is not the unemployment rate: it includes some people working part-time and excludes unemployed people who don't claim. Source
- Local authority district
- The council area a statistic is published for -- 361 across the UK. In England these are boroughs, districts and unitary authorities; in Scotland, council areas; in Wales, principal areas; in Northern Ireland, districts.
Before you use these figures
- Not a measure of unemployment: The claimant count is a count of people claiming Universal Credit (who are required to seek work) or Jobseeker's Allowance, not a count of unemployed people. It includes some people in part-time work and excludes people who are unemployed but not claiming. ONS's Labour Force Survey is the measure of unemployment, and is a different figure.
- Unusually high compared with other areas: This figure is unusually high compared with other areas currently publishing this dataset — 9,950 against a typical figure (median) of about 2,700 across 360 other areas. Worth checking against the source before treating it as a straightforward comparison.
- Unusually high in October 2024: This area's October 2024 figure is unusually high compared with what other areas reported for October 2024 — 11,375 against a typical figure (median) of about 2,770 across 360 other areas that period. No longer this dataset's latest period, so a look at just today's headline figure would not have caught it -- flagged here from a check across the dataset's full history. Worth checking against the source before treating it as a straightforward trend.
- Four nations, one series: Universal Credit and Jobseeker's Allowance operate UK-wide, so this series is directly comparable across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- unlike some UK statistics that are only published for some nations.
Cite this figure:
Claimant count — Bolton 9,950 for Bolton, July 2026 StatsMapped last confirmed this figure on 4 Sep 2026. Source: Nomis -- Claimant Count by sex and age (NM_162_1), via statsmapped.com https://statsmapped.com/united-kingdom/local-authority/bolton/claimant-count
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