§ Mr. H. G. Williamsasked the Minister of Labour whether the unemployment statistics published by his Department include only persons who have attended at the exchanges to register as unemployed on the day of the count; and, if not, what steps are taken to exclude persons previously registered who do not so attend and are, in fact, in employment on that day?
§ Mr. E. BrownThe aim of these statistics is to give as nearly as possible the number of persons registered at the exchanges and unemployed on the day of the count. The count is taken on a Monday which in many exchanges is not
3336Wbelonging to the cotton industry in July, 1937, will not be available until November next, when the information obtained from this year's exchange of books has been tabulated.
The following table gives for the cotton industry in Great Britain the estimated numbers insured at July, 1936, and the numbers recorded as unemployed at 25th January and 21st June, 1937.
a day on which persons previously registered are required to attend if unemployed. Under the arrangements hitherto in operation it has been necessary to make certain assumptions as to the continued unemployment of persons previously registered and not attending on Monday, when it is not known from other sources whether they were in fact unemployed on that day. There are other cases in which persons on the register and unemployed on Monday are not included in the count owing to the special manner in which their unemployment is recorded. The net effect on the statistics is estimated to be at the present time to include in the total from 30,000 to 50,000 persons who were not in fact unemployed on the day of the count.
It has not been easy to find a remedy for this position without disproportionate expense and interference with the normal work of the exchanges but what appears to be a satisfactory method of doing so at small cost has now been found. It consists essentially in keeping a note of the cases of uncertainty and ascertaining, in the week following the day of count, as in the majority of cases it will be possible to do, whether the day of count was in fact a day of unemployment. I propose to bring this procedure into operation in September next. As the procedure necessarily increases by one week 3337W the interval between the day of count and the publication of the figures and as it would be most inconvenient to alter the dates of publication I propose to have the count taken each month a week earlier than would be the case under the current procedure.