§ Mr. Michael McGuireasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give details of how unemployment figures and percentage rates of unemployment are computed.
§ Mr. GoldingThe count of the unemployed is carried out at local employment offices and careers offices on a selected day in each month, normally the second Thursday. The unemployed are defined as persons registered at local offices, whether claiming benefit or not, who, on the reference date, have no job and are capable of and available for work. Severely disabled persons, adult students, non-claimants to benefit seeking only part-time work and people who are temporarily stopped are not included in the count. Statistics of the numbers unemployed are provided for each employment office area. They comprise the numbers registered at the employment office together with those registered at any careers office in the area. Adjustments are made in some cases where careers office and employment office area boundaries do not coincide. Claimants to benefit registered at Professional and Executive Registered offices are allocated to employment office areas.
Where an employment office area is "self-contained"—that is, a sufficiently high proportion of those living in the area also work in the area and a high proportion of those who work in the area also live there—an unemployment rate is calculated for that area. This is done by expressing the number registered as unemployed as a percentage of the appropriate mid-year estimate of employees, including both the employed—derived from the latest census of employment—and the unemployed.
Where a single employment office area does not fulfil the above criteria of self-containment, it is combined with adjacent 426W areas in order to satisfy the criteria. Such a combined area is termed a travel-to-work area.