Youth Unemployment (Hansard, 28 November 2001)

§ Ruth Kelly

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Howard Flight, dated 28 November 2001: As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your recent question on the number of people aged 18 to 24 years who were unemployed for more than six months for each year since May 1992 in the constituency of Arundel and South Downs (18312). The Office for National Statistics (ONS) compiles statistics for unemployment from surveys following the internationally standard International Labour Organisation definition. However, for the Arundel and South Downs parliamentary constituency the survey sample size is too small to provide estimates. ONS also compiles statistics of claimants of unemployment-related benefits. The claimant count consists of all people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance or National Insurance credits at Employment Service local offices. They must declare that they are out of work, capable of, available for and actively seeking work during the week in which the claim is made. Prior to January 1996 comparable figures for earlier years are not available on the same geographical basis. Information on computerised claims by age and duration for parliamentary constituencies from January 1996 were based on the ward boundaries of the 1981 census and are available from June 1985 to January 1996. The information requested is given in the table overleaf.

Claimants aged 18 to 24 claiming for six months or more in the Arundel and South Downs parliamentary constituency for each May 1992 to May 2001 (computerised claims only)
	Number of claimants of unemployment benefit
May 1992	¹418
May 1993	¹529
May 1994	¹447
May 1995	¹345
May 1996	110
May 1997	40
May 1998	19
May 1999	9
May 2000	8
May 2001	3
¹ These figures refer to the Arundel parliamentary constituency