DRUNK on 8.4 per cent super-strength cider, a benefits claimant gleefully dances between puffs on his cigarette.
Yards away a homeless man goes from car to car, banging on their windows to demand spare change, while a scruffy-looking gang booze the day away plotting their next shoplifting raid.
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Welcome to Perry Barr, the Birmingham suburb newly named the unemployment capital of the UK, where one in six – an estimated 12,800 people – are out of work.
With cigarette butts, empty alcohol cans and food wrappers littering the streets, the area paints a grim picture just three years on from hosting 1.5million people as part of the Commonwealth Games.
But locals are far from surprised, moaning that benefits are “too attractive” and that even minimum wage jobs are near impossible to find, which they believe has supercharged a crime wave that’s rotting the area to its core.
Security workers tell us gangs of homeless and the poor are working together – sometimes recruited by gangs – to loot shops every single day and use “a range of tactics and decoys”.
Outside Perry Bar Job Centre, after an unsuccessful attempt to sort out his Universal Credit, cider-swigging Darren, 42, reflects on his life as a former ‘pill head’ who has taken every drug imaginable, bar heroin.
“It’s a scary place,” he says. “I’ve seen some of the wildest stuff around here, people getting kidnapped, punched up… it’s ruthless.”
The former painter-decorator says he has worked in tiling, decking, slabbing and fencing, but after heavily boozing for 20 years, he’s too ill to work – needing eight tablets a day to stave off seizures and mental health collapse.
He adds: “I was told I’ll be lucky if I live to 50, I only have myself to blame. It’s self-inflicted but I can’t stop. If I have a bad day I have a drink, smoke some weed, kill a couple of hours here, then I go home.”
Darren complains that those tasked with helping him at the Job Centre “don’t care because it’s just a job to them and they can go home after”.
He says: “They treat you like muck and kick you back to the curb. ‘See you in another two weeks’ but they don’t want to see you.”
Darren is among a huge variety of characters outside the building – young and old, stylish or scruffy.
One man in his 50s tells us he’s about to claim benefits after 27 years of work due to now being ‘long-term sick’, before skipping away with a surprisingly spritely gait.
And speaking to one of the Job Centre workers on condition of anonymity, there are clearly frustrations on both sides.
The employee, who holds a more cynical view about some of the “so-called jobseekers”, says: “Most people don’t want to work because they are being paid too much – up to £3,000 per month.”
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Homeless recovering drug addict Mark, in his 40s, says he’s not surprised Perry Barr is the jobless capital, telling us: “There’s so much potential here but it’s just wasted.”
He brands his chances of returning to work “near impossible”, telling us: “My mental health is f***ed. I’m sleeping on the floor with rats, p*** and s***. What chance do I have?”
Shoplifters and beggars say there is no work, they tell me, ‘There ain’t no jobs out there for me, so what else can I do?’
One Stop Shopping center security guard
‘I’m quitting the UK’
A recurring frustration among the locals we spoke to is the lack of work in England’s ‘second city’.
Sohail Taj, 45, says in three days’ time he is returning to his native Pakistan, which he left 26 years ago, to run a farm because he’s so fed up with struggling for employment here.
“I’ve booked a one-way ticket, I don’t think I’m coming back,” he tells us, ahead of closing his benefits account for good.
“It’s bulls***. You’re never going to get a job here. I’ve been trying to find regular work since Covid. I can’t even find something for the minimum wage.
“You expect the Job Centre to give you work but that’s not happening, they just give you benefits money and job sites to look at. They are doing nothing.”
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Previously Sohail was a self-employed taxi driver, but with rising costs for fuel, insurance, MOT and taxi charges, along with apps taking large chunks of his takings, he’s decided to quit the UK.
Deductions halved his £1,000-a-week earnings and the stress from that, alongside his marriage breaking down, has left him relying on benefits.
Sohail says his four housemates are in similarly dire situations because the only jobs they can find are up to 27 miles away.
“They are far, far, far away like Redditch or Tamworth,” he says. “It can be two hours away on public transport, which isn’t reliable enough to reach those places.
“If you’re doing a 12-hour shift that’s a 16-hour day and if the shift starts 5am or 6am, how are you going to get there? There’s no public transport, so you can’t.”
One of them deliberately gets caught and causes a distraction, then while we’re holding them the rest hit other shops
One Stop Shopping center security guard
One of his housemates, a 21-year-old Afghan refugee, is “trapped” in the benefits system because he “can’t read or speak English”.
Sohail reads job emails for him and helps him to apply, but fears the young man is “lost, depressed” and doomed to stagnate on £250-to-£300-a month benefits.
“He’s a young man and that’s not a lot to survive on,” Sohail says. “He’s really depressed and has tried everything from local shops to warehouses.
“It’s very, very hard to even get a minimum wage job these days. He tells me, ‘I’ll do anything, just give me work’ but instead he’s stuck sat in the house going mad.”
The language barrier is a problem highlighted when we speak to Job Centre workers, who say it affects how much they can help and dents a person’s chances of employment.
They claim the Department for Work and Pensions data pointing to Perry Barr being the UK’s unemployment capital is skewed because the area has taken on Job Centre claimants from another branch that closed, meaning stats are inflated.
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Other issues they list include job seekers having a “mixture of health problems, not being motivated” and their branch lacking resources. They add: “It’s not as easy as it seems.”
During our chat, a dishevelled drunk storms in and furiously yells about his benefits claim before stumbling out. It is clear staff are dealing with a lot.
Shoplifting gangs
Less than a two-minute walk away, at the One Stop Shopping Centre, a security guard tells us joblessness has a knock-on effect, claiming it’s led to gangs of homeless and benefit claimants working together to steal from stores.
Some of these thieves, he claims, hand over their ill-gotten goods and cash donated by strangers to people inside cars, who he suspects are ‘handlers’ from criminal enterprises.
He tells us: “Some shoplifters say they are stealing for someone else and if they don’t there will be a problem.
“Other thieves and beggars say there is no work. They tell me, ‘There ain’t no jobs out there for me, so what else can I do?’”
As we talk outside the outlet, a woman in a red tracksuit walking towards us abruptly stops in her tracks, turns 180 degrees and scurries off in the opposite direction.
I see people get tackled to the ground outside the Asda on a daily basis
Shop worker Keiran
“She’s one of them,” he says, explaining that she’s been refused entry multiple times for stealing and whenever he challenges her, she yells racist abuse.
Nearby two shaggy-haired men are sitting down, smoking roll-up cigarettes and drinking super-strength cider. One of them, the security guard says, “sends people in to steal”.
“They use tactics and decoys too,” he adds. “One of them deliberately gets caught and causes a distraction, then while we’re holding them the rest hit other shops.”
Not only that, he claims some beggars sitting on the road tell shoplifters which way to run to avoid being apprehended.
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The security guard claims police – despite being 0.7miles away, roughly a two-minute drive – take between four and five hours to deal with shoplifters.
This feeds the problem because crooks believe they operate with impunity, knowing nothing will happen and guards will struggle to hold them for minutes, let alone hours.
While the team can escort someone off the premises and implement a ‘banning order’, it doesn’t work.
He says: “Nine times out of 10 they will be back, sometimes they just wait 20 minutes and re-enter from another side, so it repeats again and again and again.”
‘Live drama show’
Much of Britain has been blighted by a shoplifting epidemic, in part due to the cost of living crisis, and Birmingham is no exception.
In 2023, a whopping 8,807 incidents were reported, which was 38 per cent higher than the previous year, when there were 2,442 crimes.
However, the true figure is likely much higher, with a Neighbourhood Watch survey finding 40 and 60 per cent of crimes go unreported in the UK every year.
The UK’s top 10 unemployment hotspots
BIRMINGHAM holds the unwanted record of being the joblessness capital of the UK.
Based on new DWP data Perry Barr is the worst with 12,800 people unemployed, including 2,105 aged 18 to 24.
England’s ‘second city’ has the top four spots and two others in the top 10.
Here we reveal the UK’s top 10 unemployment hotspots:
- Birmingham Perry Barr – 16.1 per cent
- Birmingham Ladywood – 14.7 per cent
- Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley – 12 per cent
- Birmingham Yardley – 11.9 per cent.
- Bradford West – 11.7 per cent
- Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North – 11.2 per cent
- Bradford East – 11.1 per cent
- Birmingham Erdington – 10.8 per cent
- Brent East, London – 9.6 per cent
- East Ham, London – 9.4 per cent.
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There are 12,800 people unemployed in Perry Barr alone, including 2,105 aged 18 to 24, and locals fear it’s not only a lack of opportunities or unwillingness to graft.
This they believe is worsened due to the benefits system being ‘too attractive’.
Currently, 9.3 million working-age people are claiming at least one type of government benefit. And, in the year to August 2024, Jobseekers Allowance claimants rose by 6.7 per cent to 94,000 claimants.
Council worker and gran-of-one Linda Ross, 63, who has been employed since she was 14 believes “people don’t want to work for the hourly rate”.
She tells us: “They get more if they claim benefits. It’s quite an attractive prospect. Especially, if your bills are covered and you’re getting cash too.”
Homeless former soldier Kieron Moseley, 43, who’s sofa surfing after nearly five years on the streets, believes benefits are too appealing.
He says: “A lot of jobless people have more money than people in work. It is laziness, they won’t do certain jobs and think ‘Why should I work when I get more in the benefits system?’”
Sharon Thompson, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Economy and Skills at Birmingham City Council said: “These new statistics show the challenge that we have ahead of us – to end the tale of two cities and ensure that the investment that is being brought into our city has a positive impact on the lives and life chances of people in every community in our city.”
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We are determined to break down barriers to opportunity and boost employment in Birmingham and across all areas of the UK.
“That is why our Get Britain Working reforms will transform Jobcentres and guarantee every young person the chance to earn or learn – as we deliver prosperity and growth in every corner of the country.”
West Midlands Police told us neighbourhood policing teams are “working closely” with officers to “tackle crimes impacting the community”.
They continued: “We carry out regular high visibility patrols around the area with officers using their local knowledge to catch offenders.
“We fully understand the impact and frustration of shop theft, and our dedicated neighbourhood officers have a good working relationship with the One Stop Shopping Centre. We are committed to working with them to reduce the issues.”
