UNEMPLOYMENT in York is worse than it seems because of a regular miscalculation.

Healthy jobless figures based on the number of people claiming the dole could now turn out to be misleading, according to the City of York Council's latest quarterly economic bulletin published today.

And the city's Jobcentre officials concede that it needs to reach a lot more people with its jobs available than its list of those claiming jobseekers' allowance.

City of York economic experts calculate that by using the Labour Force Survey instead, unemployment last July was 18 per cent higher - 3,900 rather than 3,200 using the claimant count method.

The bulletin states: "Further evidence that the claimant count is unrepresentative comes from Future Prospects where 11,000

of the 21,200 customer visits recorded by the project in the

April - September period were made by people describing themselves as 'unemployed.'

"Even allowing for repeat visits, it seems unlikely that fewer than 5,000 people are involved."

A household survey by the North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council also suggested that much higher numbers are out of work in the city.

It found that one in eight of its respondents (13 per cent) were jobless - considerably higher than the claimant count figure.

The bulletin calls for different measures of unemployment to pick up 'discouraged' out of work people who may not be claiming unemployment benefits.

"The North Yorkshire TEC survey picked up on where discouraged people had worked and not surprisingly the majority were from sectors in decline such as manufacturing.

"If the labour market is getting tighter, as we are often hearing in the national press, then the policy solution must look at getting discouraged labour back into the work force."

Using the Labour Force Survey, worst unemployment blackspot in York is Guildhall ward with 5.9 per cent, followed by Clifton, (4.7 per cent), Bootham (4.6 per cent) and Westfield (4.5 per cent). All these figures are above the national average of 3.6 per cent.

Steve Kempson, manager at the Jobcentre in Stonebow, York agreed that because its claimant count did not reflect everyone who was unemployed there was a need to advertise its vacancies widely "because people might not automatically come into the Jobcentres."

He added that national and regional statistics regularly published tended to reflect both labour survey and claimant count figures. "So that people can see the difference."