§ Mr. Thorntonasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish figures for the total unemployed at a convenient recent date and at a corresponding date for each of the past 10 years for England and Wales as a whole together with a comparison of the figures for unemployed at as nearly comparable dates as possible for France, West Germany, Italy and the Netherlands together with the percentages of unemployed in each case.
§ Mr. Jim LesterUsing national definitions, which are not directly comparable owing to differences in coverage, concepts of unemployment and methods of compilation, the total unemployment figures for these countries for April in each of the years 1969.79 inclusive are as follows. These figures have not been corrected for seasonal variation.
Merseyside, together in each case with a figure showing the percentage of unemployment represented by each of the figures.
§ Mr. Jim LesterThe following table gives the information for England and Wales. Information for the metropolitan counties is readily available only from November 1975 and is given in the table for each June from 1976.
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England and Wales Metropolitan counties and Greater London Merseyside metropolitan county Numbers registered as unemployed Percentage rates of unemployment Numbers registered as unemployed Percentage rates of unemployment Numbers registered as unemployed Percentage rates of unemployment June 1969 … … … 411,962 2.0 — — — — June 1970 … … … 441,952 2.1 — — — — June 1971 … … … 571,696 2.8 — — — — June 1972 … … … 639,865 3.2 — — — — June 1973 … … … 453,599 2.2 — — — — June 1974 … … … 437,431 2.1 — — — — June 1975 … … … 728,693 3.5 — — — — June 1976 … … … 1,133,750 5.4 514,149 5.4 77,473 10.6 June 1977 … … … 1,204,183 5.7 528,481 5.6 79,717 10.9 June 1978 … … … 1,194,253 5.6 524,391 5.5 81,174 11.1 June 1979 … … … 1,098,333 5.1 494,157 5.2 82,729 11.3