§ Mr. Wattsasked the Secretary of State for Employment how many unemployed people in Slough and in Berkshire had registered details of their skills and experience at jobcentres at the most recent date for which the information is available; and what proportion those numbers represented of the total registered as unemployed.
§ Mr. Alan ClarkOn 3 May 1985, 418 job seekers were registered in Slough and 2,329 job seekers registered in Berkshire. These figures include a small number of employed people seeking a change of employment. Unemployed people are no longer required to register at the jobcentre as a condition of claiming benefit. However, it is not necessary to register for employment in order to use the jobcentre. It should not be assumed that these figures represent all the job seekers in the area who are actively looking for work. Large numbers of job seekers regularly use the self-service display areas from where 65 per cent. of the vacancies notified to jobcentres are filled.
§ Mr. Baldryasked the Secretary of State for Employment what is his estimate of the number of job vacancies filled each month.
§ Mr. Alan ClarkIt is estimated that, during 1984–85, on average about 600,000 job vacancies were filled each month.
§ Mr. Baldryasked the Secretary of State for Employment what information is collected by his Department on the state of the labour market in travel-to-work areas, other than the number of people registered as unemployed and job vacancies notified directly to jobcentres.
§ Mr. Alan ClarkThe labour market data collected by the Department for travel-to-work areas are as follows:
32Wbe covered by this survey. An earlier programme of ad hoc surveys provided comparable information about young people who left the scheme before June 1984. The results of all completed surveys are given in the table.
- (i) Monthly counts of the claimant unemployed resident in each area analysed by sex, with quarterly analyses by age and duration of unemployment;
- (ii) Triennial estimates of employees in employment in each area, analysed by sex and industry and full-time/part-time status.
Statistics of job vacancies and of confirmed redundancies are collected for jobcentre areas, from which approximations can be made for travel-to-work areas.
Information on certain aspects of labour markets in travel-to-work areas, such as the occupations of those in employment, is also available to the Department from the decennial census of population, which is conducted by the office of population censuses and surveys.