§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for Employment, further to his reply dated 1 December, Official Report, column 80, to the hon. Member for Grimsby concerning long-term unemployment, whether the figures given refer to aggregate unemployment during the specified periods or to continuous unemployment; and, if the latter, whether the computer records can aggregate past periods of unemployment in respect of any claimant.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonThe numbers of people registered as unemployed on a selected date in each quarter are analysed according to the duration of their current spell on the register and the figures given in my reply of 1 December are from this analysis. There are no statistics which aggregate the separate periods of unemployment experienced by individuals.
§ Mr. Adleyasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will tabulate, for the nine other European Economic Community countries, plus the United States of America, Canada and Japan, the movement in percentage and numerical terms of unemployment in the last two months.
§ Mr. Peter MorrisonSeasonally adjusted changes in unemployment in the two months between August and October, the latest available common date for the majority of the countries requested, are given below. changes between two individual months can be misleading because of erratic fluctuations in monthly figures.
506W
Unemployment, seasonally adjusted, change between August and October Change in unemployment change in percentage rate thousands per cent Belgium *-3 -0.8 -0.1 Denmark -18 -7.8 -0.7 France -22 -1.2 -0.1 Germany *83 6.1 0.4 Greece -1 -2.8 n/c Ireland 4 3.0 0.3 Netherlands 30 7.6 0.7 United Kingdom† 103 3.9 0.4 Canada 153 18.3 1.3 Japan** 30 2.4 n/c United States of America 863 11.3 0.8 * Estimate. † Excluding school leavers. ‡ May to July. ** July to September. n/c No change. Source: OECD "Main Economic Indicators" supplemented by labour attaché reports, and so on.
Seasonally adjusted figures are not available for Italy and Luxembourg.