Employment Statistics (Hansard, 6 July 2000)

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.

Letter to Lord Pearson of Rannoch from the National Statistician and Registrar General for England and Wales, Office for National Statistics, Mr Len Cook, dated 6 July 2000.

As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Question about full-time employment and unemployment rates in the United Kingdom.

The table below shows seasonally adjusted estimates from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) which is the main source of labour market data on individuals. It gives the number of people who were in full-time employment in the three-month periods from November 1998 to January 1999 and February to April 2000 (the latest date for which data are available). The table also shows International Labour Organisation (ILO) unemployment rates for the same periods.

	People in full-tone employment (thousands)	ILO unemployment rate (%)
Nov 1998-Jan 1999	20.644	6.3
Feb-Apr 2000	20,932	5.7

People aged 16 or over are classed as in employment by the LFS if they have done at least one hour of paid work (as an employee or self-employed) in the week prior to their LFS interview or if they have a job that they are temporarily away from. People who do unpaid work in a family business and people on government-supported training and employment programmes are also included according to the International Labour Organisation convention.

The measure of unemployment derived from the LFS is defined on a consistent and internationally recognised basis set out by the ILO. It counts as unemployed people who are (a) without a paid job, (b) available to start work within the next two weeks, and (c) have either looked for work in the last four weeks or are waiting to start a job already obtained.