Why is Birkenhead out of work?

Two months ago, Times columnist Fraser Nelson made a stunning claim about Birkenhead: just over half of the working-age population in the town’s centre was out of work. It’s an extraordinary figure — and one that strains belief. Everyone knows Birkenhead has its economic challenges, but for more than half of the centre's population to be out of work seems exceptional. So what’s going on? 

We sent Laurence to Birkenhead for another edition of Answers in The Post — our new feature looking at some of your big questions about how Merseyside works. 

But first, here’s the latest news around the city region, including an update on the much-vaunted and important-sounding Northern Arc...

Your Post briefing

Merseyside Police have said there’s a “very real chance” the killer of Diane Sindall is still at large. 21-year-old Sindall was killed in Birkenhead in 1986 in a frenzied sexual assault, a crime so shocking it inspired the founding of the RASA charity to help victims of sexual and domestic violence. Peter Sullivan, who spent 38 years in prison for the murder, was acquitted at the Court of Appeal after new testing on semen samples preserved from the crime scene. The police say that more than 260 individuals identified in the original investigation have been eliminated as suspects. Detective chief superintendent Karen Jaundrill has appealed to the public for information: “Please contact us, regardless of how insignificant you think the information is, and let us judge where that fits into our investigation." 

Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham have called on the government to support their “Northern Arc” project — in the common parlance, a railway line. The mayors of the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester respectively visited Westminster to urge the government to commit to a new train link between the two cities, which they say could reduce travel time to 20 minutes. In the light of the cancellation of HS2’s northern leg, plans for the line were first introduced in May 2024. The mayors would like construction to begin by the early 2030s. Although regular rail links between Liverpool and Manchester already exist, a joint report by the combined authorities suggested the additional line could raise £15 billion for the local economy and create 22,000 jobs during construction alone. Rotheram and Burnham, who previously co-wrote a memoir, were not the only north-west institutions to team up: the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News also backed the mayors’ proposals. (The Echo and the MEN are both, of course, owned by Reach PLC.)

And a special concert to thank those who helped raise £7.4m for Zoe’s Place has been announced. The future of the baby hospice was under threat last October when it found itself needing to find £5 million within 30 days to move to new premises, but donations from Home Bargains, sportswear firm Montirex, celebrities like Robbie Fowler and “Meatball” Molly McCann, and the local community helped keep the charity alive. Now, "A Celebration of Zoe's Place" will take place at the M&S Bank Arena in July. Merseyside musicians including Jamie Webster, the Zutons and the Lightning Seeds are scheduled to perform at the event, which will be "a celebration of community, compassion, and resilience” according to organisers. Presale tickets go on sale today at £30 plus a service fee. 

In the second edition of Answers in The Post, we’re investigating why Birkenhead is out of work.

Why is there disagreement about joblessness in Birkenhead?

The controversy followed journalist Fraser Nelson’s Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, about Britain’s apparently dysfunctional benefits system. By his calculations, 51% of working age adults (aged between 16 and pensionable age) in “Birkenhead Central” are on out-of-work benefits. That’s mostly sickness benefits, but also jobseekers’ and carers’ benefits. 

Nelson claims that Birkenhead is emblematic of a much bigger problem in the UK that’s hidden by bad statistics. While the national figure for unemployment is 1.7 million (relatively low by historical standards), the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits is much higher (6 million). This is due to the number on sickness benefits, who don’t register as unemployed, but whose numbers have soared since the pandemic.

Where, exactly, is “Birkenhead Central”?

It’s not a parliamentary constituency nor a council ward, but a “middle-layer super output area” (MSOA) of 5,600 working-age people.  As trying to understand this concept leads me down a rabbit hole of blogs and statistics websites, I consult a data scientist familiar with the ONS data, who has asked not to be named because the agency he works for must remain politically neutral. 

“[MSOAs] allows for more granular understanding of trends when data is available, as opposed to just having to use the council ward,” he says. “Obviously the issue is it allows people to cherry pick statistics to suit an agenda.” (Nelson has posted his methodology on X.)

It’s possible the boundaries of “Birkenhead Central” are drawn such that they make the numbers look especially bad. But clearly, 2,800 people is a lot of people out of work in an area that size.

Why are jobless rates particularly high in Birkenhead?

A key factor is the decline of the Cammell Laird shipyard, which employed 20,000 workers at its wartime peak compared to a rump of 650 permanent staff today. Speaking to people on the streets and in pubs and cafes, many of whom are understandably reticent to speak openly, this post-industrial malaise comes up again and again.

So does immigration, with immigrants sometimes accused of being disproportionately likely to claim benefits. One resident tells me you’re treated better by the welfare system “if you put boot polish on your face”. But (unsurprisingly) this racist comment is not backed up with facts. According to the last census, 13% of people in Birkenhead central were born outside of the UK, versus 16.8% across England and Wales. This is not an area subject to disproportionate immigration. 

The demise of the retail sector is also an issue. When I arrive on a Friday lunchtime, Birkenhead Market – once Europe’s second largest – is a ghost town, with its entire front section desolate and many rows of stalls inside now shuttered.

The once bustling Pyramids shopping centre also looks faintly dystopian. The row of units that once housed a large Marks and Spencer’s lies fallow. Shoegaze is having a closing down sale. Millets is no more, meaning a treasured piece of alliteration by local legends Half Man Half Biscuit (“there’s a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets”) will now make even less sense.

Why has this increased so much since the pandemic?

This isn’t fully understood, though worsening mental health is commonly identified as an issue. “I’m not a mental health professional,” Moira McAdam says, “But I know from speaking to people mental health dipped [during the pandemic].” 

When Moira first began work at the Number Seven project — a citizen supermarket, café, and advice hub — she expected they would have about 100 members who needed the help they provided. During COVID, however, their numbers swelled. 

“We’re now at 1,200 members,” she says. When I ask about the cuts the government plans to make to personal independence payments (PIP), a benefit designed to help with the additional costs of being sick or disabled, and the extra strain on projects like Number Seven, Moira gives me an ominous look. “It is something we’re dreading.”

There are other barriers stopping people getting back into work. “I’m on benefits,” Jeanette and Sally (not their real names, as they did not wish to be identified) say in stereo when I tell them the subject of my article. The two women are gallantly handling two young girls – Sally’s daughters and Jeanette’s granddaughters – into a double-decker pram. Jeanette, a diabetic, uses a walker and has medical braces on both hands, while Sally, 25, has two more children in nursery with another on the way.

“I would like to work,” says Sally, who was an art student before her first baby. “I always wanted to work in a nursery. But…” She gestures to her young daughters, who are squabbling over a toy fish. “You don’t really get the hours or holidays like you do with teaching, say.”

Are things likely to improve?

As chance would have it, Birkenhead’s MP, Alison McGovern, is now the employment minister. Late last year, McGovern told a Lords select committee that benefit claimants are increasingly finding that they are financially better off being signed off sick rather than actively seeking employment. The government says it’s committed to changing this and helping people back into work.

However, The Post spoke with Ben, who was a Job Centre work coach until September 2022, and has since worked as a PIP advisor in Birkenhead. He told us that the culture within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) doesn’t help those who need it, describing a bureaucratic, tick-box approach that isn’t responsive to Birkenhead’s higher rates of health and social problems. He believed the outsourcing of these services by the previous government had made things worse, with senior officials more concerned about getting people onto schemes instead of working through their employment barriers.

There’s a small amount of optimism that might be gleaned from today’s figures showing the UK economy growing better than expected — though it’s unclear if this is generating jobs in Birkenhead. For a town that threw its lot in first with industry and then retail, it will be challenging. Many are banking on the Wirral Waters investment to regenerate the area’s dockland.

But even if this does generate new jobs (and, as our previous reporting has shown, there are serious questions about the schemes) it won’t be easy for some of those who have been out of work for a long time to take them up. Long periods of joblessness lead to deskilling and health issues that are hard to break out of. Fraser Nelson is likely to be talking about Birkenhead’s out of work population for some time.

Thanks for reading this week’s Answers in The Post. Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on why Birkenhead Central could be struggling with unemployment.

And, if you’ve got your own burning question about Merseyside that you want us to dig into, follow this link to submit it.