ALMOST 700 Teessiders have joined the jobs queue in the last month, official figures have shown.

And with all five of Teesside local authority areas sitting in the top 10 of the worst unemployment rates in the North-east, industry bosses called on the Government to take action.

The number of people out of work on Teesside in December was 27,312, a 663 rise on a month earlier. Hartlepool tops the region’s unemployment chart as the area with the worst unemployment rate in the North-east - at 7.7%.

Middlesbrough takes second place at 7.6% followed by Redcar and Cleveland (fifth with 6.4%), Darlington (eighth, 5.5%) and Stockton (ninth, 5.4%).

Hartlepool also has the third highest unemployment rate in the UK, with Middlesbrough taking the fifth spot of the national league.

Figures from the Office For National Statistics showed that in December 7,064 people were claiming Job Seekers Allowance in Middlesbrough.

Other local figures are: Stockton 6,786; Hartlepool, 4,451; Redcar and Cleveland 5,498 and Darlington 3,513.

The North-east also has the UK’s highest rate of unemployment, rising 11,000 to 153,000 - a rate of 12%. The figure is almost double that of the South-west, which has an unemployment rate of 6.5%.

Nationally, unemployment reached a 17-year high after a 118,000 increase in the jobless total, which saw a record number of young people out of work.

The figure jumped to 2.68 million in the three months to November, the worst since the summer of 1994, giving the UK a jobless rate of 8.4%. The number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds increased by 52,000 over the quarter to 1.04 million, the highest since records began in 1992.

North East Chamber of Commerce chief executive, James Ramsbotham, said that while not unexpected, the region’s jobless figures follow “an increasingly worrying trend”.

“The Government must take radical action and move quickly to increase incentives and reduce red tape to stimulate private sector employment as it will be some time before the North-east fully recovers from the impact of public sector cuts.

“There are signs, however, that the private sector is starting to pick up the slack.

“Our export performance continues to outstrip the rest of the country and we remain the only region with a positive balance of trade mainly thanks to the region’s excellent manufacturing sector, which continues to provide the cornerstone of the North-east economy.”