24 chasing each vacancy in London's jobless blackspot

More than 20 jobless people are chasing every advertised vacancy in London's worst unemployment blackspot, new research reveals today.

Hackney has the unenviable title as the most difficult place in Britain to find work with an average of almost 24 dole claimants for every available post, according to the TUC.

Deprived London boroughs dominate the national "top 10" with Haringey in sixth place (14.2 claimants for every vacancy) and Lewisham in seventh (13.9).

However, if smaller local authority areas with fewer than 400 vacancies are excluded, a total of seven London boroughs appear in the top 10, the others being Waltham Forest (12.4), Lambeth (11.8), Brent (11.5) and Hammersmith & Fulham (10.8). Of the top 10 unemployment blackspots in Britain, only three are outside London. These are Wirral, Medway in Kent and Rhondda in Wales.

The TUC research shows that unemployed Londoners face the worst odds in the country in their search for work. Latest figures for April show that there were 222,626 people in the capital signing on for jobseeker's allowance, almost eight times the 29,222 advertised vacancies on offer.

For Britain as a whole the ratio is 5.08 and for England it is five. The figures were drawn from the number of jobseeker's allowance claimants and vacancies advertised with Jobcentre Plus, a government database of unfilled posts.

New unemployment figures are due to be published tomorrow and are expected to show that the total is still rising from its current level of just over 2.5 million. Last month's figures showed that number of employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased by 25,000 to reach 1.07 million, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "While the economy is slowly emerging from recession, the jobs outlook for millions is still bleak."