Does Brum have an ‘out of work’ crisis?

Dear readers, welcome to another week and to all 36 of the new members who joined us over the weekend, a very special hello. Gather round, get comfortable — it’s September and the start of a new season that will be rich with stories. We are very glad to have you with us.

Today, we’ve got some concerning news about the number of people who are out of work in Birmingham. Data suggests 25% of the working age population is claiming out-of-work benefits — that’s the second highest number in the country after Blackpool, according to a new study. More on that in today’s Big Story.

Then, in your Brum in Brief, the WMCA CEO Ed Cox and economist Paul Swinney battle it out over some pretty major plans to make the region more prosperous. Also, two lucky winners who bought National Lottery tickets in Brum are yet to claim their jackpots. Check your pockets and down the side of the sofa — the prize is £1m each, that’s a lot of Dispatch memberships!

Catch up and coming up:

• Last week Samuel’s piece on the Weoley Warriors and the politics of flags got the Dispatch community talking. As of writing there are 56 comments on the piece. Add your thoughts here.  
• Jon Neale, the closest thing The Dispatch has to a resident historian, wrote about a vanished Harborne railway line and Birmingham public transport this weekend.  
• The curator and art writer Ruth Millington’s piece on Birmingham’s ‘forgotten pop art icon,’ Peter Phillips, will be published here on Wednesday. Expect stories of the swinging 60’s: including a joyride around Birmingham that proved to be very influential to Phillips’ work.

Photo of the week:

Jav Singh (insta.brum1). Do you have fond memories of sitting by Dhruva Mistry’s The River (1992-1994), otherwise known as the Floozie in the Jacuzzi? Let us know in the comments. 

Big Story: does Brum have an ‘out of work’ crisis?

Topline: New data shows that Birmingham now has the second highest level of working-age people on out-of-work benefits (including sickness) in the country, at 25%.

Context: The stats come from the DWP’s (Department of Work and Pensions) recently updated database. Fraser Nelson, the former editor of The Spectator, has crunched the numbers on his Substack. In effect, one in every four people between the ages of 18 and 64 is now outside the workforce or formal tertiary education in Birmingham. The city now has the second highest rate of ‘out of work’ benefits claimants among the places included in the study.  

Background: Nelson, who is currently a columnist for The Times, has been writing about the country’s post-Covid explosion in sickness benefits for a while. In 2024, he presented Channel 4’s Inside Britain’s £48 Billion Benefits Scandal (for which he came under fire from Disability Rights UK who called the programme an “insult to the millions of disabled people on the poverty line”). Others have criticised Nelson’s bundling of unemployment and sickness benefits into one figure. 

It wasn’t always like this: In 2020, Birmingham ranked closely alongside other major post-industrial cities like Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester, regarding out-of-work benefits. However, within five years, the second city’s benefits rate has spiked from 14% to 25%. 

Blackpool vs Birmingham: Brum is now narrowly trailing the famously depressed seaside resort of Blackpool where 27% of working age people are on some form of out of work benefit. In 2024, Birmingham experienced a very sharp spike in its out-of-work population, seeing a 2% increase across the year. Blackpool is a fraction of the size of Birmingham and notably contains no university, little high tech industry, and is reliant on shaky seasonal employment connected to tourism: a vastly different place to the second city. 

Other statistics: As of June 2025, council data claims that 14.3% of the city are claiming out of work benefits outside of sickness related payments, while formal unemployment figures in 2024 were at 8.2%. 

Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics has suggested that the total percentage of economically inactive people, including those who aren’t claiming working age benefits like carers, stay at home parents, and retired people, is 27.1% of the population of Birmingham. 

Why the spike? There are many theories. Firstly, we have the youngest population on average of any European city, potentially skewing out-of-work numbers due to poor entry level hiring across the UK. Secondly, national insurance hikes have cratered the hospitality sector’s hiring, which has had a predominately large effect on younger workers. Third, NHS backlogs in the University Hospitals Birmingham Trust, are some of the worst in the UK, according to the Express and Star: affecting people’s ability to work.    

Bottom line: It's an open question why Britain’s second city has reached such heights of economic inactivity that it's rivalling Blackpool for a problematic first place. One thing is clear, however, any talk of spurring economic growth in the city will need to address the issue of rapidly growing ‘hidden unemployment.’ 

Brum in Brief

📈 The question of how best to grow the West Midlands’ economy has come up for debate with thinktank Centre for Cities critiquing the WMCA's approach in a recent blog post. Paul Swinney argues that the public body’s recently published ‘local growth plan’ mistakenly claims that the region is “polycentric” and not “monocentric”. Without getting too deep into the technicalities, this essentially means that unlike Greater Manchester and London, the West Mids is a collection of many urban centres rather than having one, clear city centre. Swinney says this isn’t the case — jobs in the region are clearly concentrated in Birmingham, just like Manchester. The problem in both cases, he says, is jobs aren’t concentrated enough in these cities. Moreover, Swinney thinks Brum city centre is too small to generate enough prosperity to spread out to neighbours like Dudley and Walsall. Taking to LinkedIn to hit back at Swinney, the WMCA’s chief executive Ed Cox insisted the situation was “more complex” than the analyst had made out — mainly because the WMCA’s research has found three key areas where people travel to work: Birmingham and Solihull; Coventry; and the Black Country. Read his full response here.

🏛️ Several historic buildings in Selly Oak are set to be sold by the University of Birmingham (UoB) following a local campaign to save them from falling into dilapidation. Included in the plot of land UoB is putting on the market are seven Grade II listed cottages, designed in the Arts and Crafts style, and two other buildings called Alan Geale House and Archibald House. They are the work of renowned architect William Alexander Harvey and his partner Graham Wicks, and were created for a pioneering training facility for Quaker Sunday School teachers, called Westhill College, founded in 1907. UoB took them on in 1947 and between 2005 and 2024, the BBC used the site to film the soap Doctors, but since that wrapped up in November last year, many of the buildings had deteriorated. In a statement posted on UoB’s website, their director of estates Steve Jordan said a tendering process would begin this autumn, and the university “recognised and appreciated the heritage status of the site” and wanted to “find the right expertise and investment for the area”. As The Dispatch reported in June, since 2022, local campaign group Friends of the Close have been pressuring the university to act by either investing in or selling the site. Group spokesperson Sue Smye told us they were “very pleased” with UoB’s latest decision and they will be closely following the next steps.

Quick Hits

🎫 The National Lottery is urging two lucky winners of £1 million each to come forward and claim their prizes. The two golden tickets were purchased in Birmingham — one in May and the other earlier this month. Read more on GB News.

👩‍⚕️ The ‘toxic’ University Hospitals Birmingham NHS trust has made many improvements, according to the care watchdog. Read more on the BBC.

⚖️ A Walsall construction supplies firm has been found guilty of providing fraudulent safety certificates for a building site platform that collapsed in 2021, killing a father and son. Read more on the BBC.

🎫 The Netherton Arts Centre, a former theatre in Dudley, has been given Grade II listed status, reports the Express and Star. The foundation stone was laid by the Countess of Dudley on July 5 1883.

🏚️ Birmingham City Council has cracked down on unlicensed rental properties, issuing £450k of fines, according to Birmingham Live.  

🍺 A crowd of people draped in St George’s flags who were refused entry to Castle Vale’s Manor Farm pub were ‘rowdy, bad tempered and drunk’, the manager has told the Daily Mail. A video of a young man verbally abusing her was widely shared on social media last week.

🪗 Hundreds of people have signed a petition, backed by Pete Doherty, to reverse a Birmingham City Council crackdown on busking in the city centre. Read more on Birmingham Live.

Media picks

📰 The Telegraph’s Richard Godwin takes us on a written journey through Spaghetti Junction, otherwise known as the Gravelly Hill Interchange. Godwin describes the feeling of standing underneath the interchange as a ‘religious experience’ tracing the motorway junction’s pillars back to ancient British structures: “[they’re like] updated megaliths, modern Stonehenges of reinforced concrete.” Godwin also notes that Spaghetti Junction has been used by Hollywood as a symbol of both the future and urban decline, with Cliff Richard filming his 1973 movie Take Me High here, alongside Steven Spielberg’s more recent Ready Player One (2018). 

📷 In case you missed it, this recent Observer obituary marks the life of influential photographer Nick Hedges, who documented destitute housing conditions in Britain in the late sixties. Born in Bromsgrove and educated at the Birmingham School of Art, Hedges was inspired by the radicalism of that decade and the promise of better things to come: “It was invigorating and exciting,” he said in 2023. Commissioned in 1968 by the charity Shelter, his stark and grainy black and white shots of city slums were used in their campaigns for social housing. A photographic tribute to Hedges was also posted on Instagram by the Flatpack Film Festival, who recently screened a new documentary about the photographer.

Our to do list

🎨 This week is your last chance to see two Ikon exhibitions. Thread the Loom celebrates the art of weaving, and Span is a solo show by the Korean artist Seulgi Lee. Both free.

🎤 On Wednesday, comedian and homebody Rhys James will be chatting to Lolly Adefope at the Glee Club about his new book: You’ll like it when you get there. Tickets from £14.

🎶 On Thursday, Arts & Vybz is back for its autumn season at ML2 in Digbeth. Expect live music, spoken word and installations. Tickets from £6.13.

🍷 On Saturday, the 11th annual summer party at Edgbaston’s Martineau Gardens promises complimentary wine and a raffle. Classic fete vibes. Tickets £22.38.

🎭 From this Saturday, peek behind the curtain of the Rep in one of their 90 minute backstage tours, including a look at where theatre sets are built from scratch. Tickets from £6.