Epsom Under-25 Claimants Fell 11%, Alone in Surrey

Young people in Epsom and Ewell are signing on in smaller numbers than they were a year ago. Everywhere else in Surrey, the opposite is happening.

There were 165 people aged 16 to 24 claiming out-of-work benefits in the borough in July 2026, down from 185 in July 2025. That is a fall of 10.8 per cent. Across Surrey as a whole the same age group rose 21.6 per cent, from 2,690 to 3,270.

Epsom and Ewell was the only one of Surrey’s eleven districts where the figure fell. It was also the steepest fall of any of the 64 local authorities in the South East, and only five of those 64 fell at all. The figures come from the claimant count published by the Office for National Statistics, released on 18 August.

The borough total still went up

None of that means fewer people in Epsom and Ewell are claiming. The total went the other way.

1,095 people were claiming in the borough in July 2026, up from 1,055 a year earlier. That is a rise of 40, or 3.8 per cent. As a share of residents aged 16 to 64 it is 2.1 per cent, exactly where it was in July 2025.

The borough still sits well below everywhere it is normally measured against:

• Epsom and Ewell: 2.1 per cent of 16 to 64-year-olds
• Surrey: 2.4 per cent, up from 2.2
• South East: 3.1 per cent
• United Kingdom: 3.9 per cent

Only Mole Valley, at 3.6 per cent, had a smaller percentage rise in its total than Epsom and Ewell’s 3.8 per cent. Reigate and Banstead had the largest, at 11.2 per cent.

The rise is entirely at the older end

Split the borough’s 1,095 claimants by age and the picture changes completely.

The whole of the borough’s increase, and then some, is people aged 50 and over. That group rose 15.4 per cent in twelve months. For comparison, over-50 claims rose 11.1 per cent across Surrey, 5.8 per cent across the South East and 1.8 per cent across the United Kingdom. Epsom and Ewell’s older claimants are rising more than eight times faster than the national rate.

The age bands do not add exactly to the total because ONS rounds every figure to the nearest five.

Where in the borough

Ward figures for July 2026 add up to the borough total exactly, at 1,095.

Town and Court wards, which cover the town centre and the streets east of it, hold just under a third of the borough’s claimants between them. The ward series only begins in the current data vintage, so there is no year-ago ward figure to compare against. The year-on-year work has to be done at borough level.

What the claimant count is, and is not

This matters, because the number gets reported as unemployment and it is not that.

• The claimant count records people claiming benefits principally for being out of work. Under Universal Credit that includes some people who are working but on low earnings and still subject to work-search conditions.
• It is not seasonally adjusted. July always carries school and college leavers, which is why a July figure should only ever be compared with another July.
• Every figure is rounded to the nearest five, so small changes in a small borough should be read as a direction, not a precise count.
• It is not the same as the unemployment rate from the Labour Force Survey, which is measured a different way and is not published for a borough this size.

What it means for you

If you are 16 to 24 and looking for work in Epsom, the local picture is genuinely better than the county one. Fewer young people here are on out-of-work benefits than a year ago, at a time when the number rose in every other Surrey district and by almost 40 per cent in Surrey Heath. The borough’s overall claimant rate, 2.1 per cent, is close to half the UK’s.

If you are over 50, the number to watch is the other one. Over-50 claims in the borough are up 15.4 per cent in a year while the UK figure barely moved. That is the group carrying the whole of Epsom and Ewell’s increase, and it is the part of the release nobody leads on.

For anyone comparing what is happening here with the rest of the county, remember that these figures cover Epsom and Ewell borough only. Ashtead and Leatherhead are in Mole Valley, and Banstead and Tadworth are in Reigate and Banstead. Two of those three districts sit at opposite ends of the table above.

The next monthly release covers August 2026 and is due in mid-September.

Sources

• ONS claimant count, dataset NM_162_1, via nomis, for every figure in this article: borough, ward, age band and comparator, July 2025 and July 2026, not seasonally adjusted.
• Comparator geographies used: Epsom and Ewell (E07000208), Surrey (E10000030), South East (E12000008) and the United Kingdom. The 64-authority South East ranking and the eleven-district Surrey ranking were both built from the same dataset and month.

Where the borough’s money goes and what a house costs here is on Epsom house prices. What is being built, and where, is on Epsom planning.