§ Mr. Brintonasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will institute a system whereby the published figures for unemployment differentiate between those genuinely seeking work and those who are not.
§ Mr. Jim LesterMost unemployed registrants are claimants to unemployment benefits and they have to affirm for each day that they claim to be unemployed that they are capable of, available for, and unable to find work. It has not been possible to establish reasonably firm criteria which identify registrants not "genuinely seeking work" so as to exclude them from the count of the unemployed. Accordingly any estimates 121W of the numbers of such people are necessarily highly speculative.
Officials of this Department and of the Manpower Services Commission employment services division are considering, as a matter of priority, those aspects of liaison which concern the application of rules about the unemployed accepting jobs which are suitable and available.