The number of jobless people in Brighton has soared in the last year.

Figures out today, compiled by the House of Commons Library, revealed 34 per cent growth in Jobseekers' Allowance claimants in Brighton Pavilion and 15.8 per cent increase in Brighton Kemp Town.

Nationally, the number of people collecting unemployment benefit has fallen by 10.2 per cent between September 2003 and September 2004.

This trend is reflected across most of Sussex and exceeded in Hove, where claimants have fallen by 13 per cent in the last year.

But in Brighton Pavilion, the figure has ballooned from 1,680 to 2,251 over the same period, placing it at the bottom of a league table of parliamentary constituencies' performance on unemployment.

Brighton Kemp Town is fourth from bottom of the table, after unemployment rose from 1,694 to 1,961.

The two Brighton constituencies now have the highest rates of unemployment in the South East, outside London, despite a long-term decline in unemployment since 1997.

Unemployment has fallen by 49.5 per cent from 4,455 in Brighton Pavilion since Labour came to power and by 41.7 per cent from 3,364 in Brighton Kemp Town.

Brighton Pavilion MP David Lepper said: "What this signals is, while the trend in unemployment figures has been downward in recent years, we can't be complacent.

"We have got to keep ramming home the message at a national level that in the South East, which many people regard as prosperous, there are places like Brighton which still has persistent difficulties."

Mr Lepper said he was surprised by the growth in unemployment over the last year. He said Brighton's high transient population might be a factor, as well as the trend for call centre and service industry jobs to move abroad.

"One of the things I've been campaigning about, although I don't think it has had a big effect in the city, is the possibility of more back-office type call centre jobs moving abroad.

"I think we need to look at the city as a whole, but in my constituency, particularly around the Regency ward, there are a lot of multi-occupied bed sits and flats and there's a big turnover.

"There are perhaps people moving into the city for the first time, maybe without a job to go to."

Brighton Kemp Town MP Des Turner said: "I think this is very much a Brighton rather than a Hove problem because the concentration of socially-disadvantaged people is in Brighton.

"It disappoints me because things have been going in the right direction and it suddenly switches back. I think we have perhaps reached the point where job creation, which has been very successful under Labour, is starting to slow down. We are getting to the hardcore of unemployed and to get into work now people have got to have the skills and training and I think that's where the problem lies.

"We have got to keep it going in the right direction, the people can't afford for us to slip back."

The authors of the report, Edward Beale, Ian Townsend and Alex Adcock, warn the figures represent only the levels of unemployment within each constituency rather than the availability of work.

They wrote: "The rates presented here should be regarded as a social measure of relative deprivation rather than as an economic measure of the mismatch between the supply and demand for labour as they take no account of people's ability to seek work outside the constituency in which they live."