The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated January 2009:"As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking how many people living in (a) North Yorkshire and (b) England were unemployed in each year since 1993. (247594)""The Office for National Statistics (ONS) compiles unemployment statistics for local areas from the Annual Population Survey (APS) and its predecessor, the annual Labour Force Survey (LFS), following International Labour Organisation (ILO) definitions.""Table 1 shows the number of people aged 16+, resident in (a) North Yorkshire and (b) England, who were unemployed in each year. The estimates for England have also been compiled from the APS to be consistent with those for North Yorkshire and will therefore differ from the unemployment figures published in the Labour Market First Release.""Estimates are provided for the 12 months ending in February from 1995 to 2004 from the annual LFS, and for the 12 months ending in March from 2005 to 2008 as well as June 2008, from the APS. Figures for earlier years are not available. The July 2007 to June 2008 APS dataset is the most recent for which figures are available, whereas a consistent time series is best provided using periods ending in February or March.""As the estimates for North Yorkshire are for a subset of the population in a relatively small geographical area, they are based on small sample sizes, and are therefore subject to large margins of uncertainty." Table 1: Number of persons unemployed¹ resident in England and North Yorkshire Thousand 12 months ending England North Yorkshire February 1995 2,160 15 February 1996 2,002 18 February 1997 1,833 14 February 1998 1,580 14 February 1999 1,413 13 February 2000 1,388 13 February 2001 1,237 10 February 2002 1,181 7 February 2003 1,234 9 February 2004 1,207 8 March 2005 1,175 7 March 2006 1,278 9 March 2007 1,378 11 March 2008 1,356 8 June 2008² *1,366 ****9 ¹ Levels of unemployment are provided for persons aged 16 and over. The figures presented are weighted to population estimates published in 2007. ² Coefficients of Variation have been calculated for the latest period as an indication of the quality of the estimates. See guide to quality as follows. Guide to Quality: The Coefficient of Variation (CV) indicates the quality of an estimate, the smaller the CV value the higher the quality. The true value is likely to lie within +/- twice the CV—for example, for an estimate of 200 with a CV of 5 per cent. we would expect the population total to be within the range 180-220 Key Coefficient of Variation (CV) (%) Statistical robustness * 0 [le] CV <5 Estimates are considered precise. ** 5 [le] CV <10 Estimates are considered reasonably precise. *** 10 [le] CV <20 Estimates are considered acceptable. **** CV [le] 20 Estimates are considered too unreliable for practical purposes. Source: Annual Labour Force Survey & Annual Population Survey