§ Mrs. Iris RobinsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many(a) jobs have been lost and (b) new jobs have been created in Northern Ireland in the past year. [137804]
§ Mr. PearsonOver the 12 months to 7 November 2003, there were 4,957 redundancies in Northern Ireland confirmed to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.
Information on the number of jobs created is not available. However, figures from the NI Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) can be used to estimate the net change in employee jobs during the past year. Latest figures from the June 2003 QES showed that there were 667,610 employee jobs in Northern Ireland. This represented an increase of 5,650 (0.9 per cent.) from the figure for June 2002.