§ Mr. PickthallTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many job vacancies there were in(a) 1997 and (b) 2003 in West Lancashire. [171493]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Colin Pickthall, dated 11 May 2004:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about job vacancies in West Lancashire. (171493)
According to Jobcentre Plus administrative records the number of unfilled vacancies notified to Jobcentres in Lancashire West Jobcentre Plus District was 4,730 on average during 1997. This represents only a proportion of all the vacancies available, as not all vacancies are notified to Jobcentres.
Figures are not available for West Lancashire alone because the vacancies are allocated to local Jobcentres, not according to constituency boundaries, and because of the practice of notifying some vacancies centrally with one Jobcentre taking vacancies for others in the same district.
Jobcentre vacancy statistics were withdrawn from National Statistics in September 2001 as a result of distortions to the data, which occurred following the introduction of new administrative procedures by Jobcentre plus. Comparable figures for vacancies in 2003 are therefore unavailable.
Results from the ONS Vacancy Survey were released as National Statistics from July 2003, but are not available for local areas.
§ Mr. PickthallTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many new jobs have been created in West Lancashire since 1997. [171495]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Colin Pickthall, dated 11 May 2004:
As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about jobs created in West Lancashire. (171495)
While statistics of new jobs created are not available explicitly, statistics from surveys enable comparisons to be made of net changes in numbers of jobs from year to year.
The most recent year for which data are available is 2002. There were 35,900 employees in the West Lancashire constituency in 2002 compared to 33,800 in 1997, a net increase of 2,200 jobs during this period. All figures are rounded to the nearest 100, which can introduce rounding error.
The figures provided relate to employee jobs only. with self-employed jobs excluded, and are taken from the rescaled Annual Employment Survey (1997) and the Annual Business Inquiry (2002)