Social Security Benefits

(asked on 9th July 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the extent to which people are excluded from unemployment statistics as a result of not being eligible for social security benefits.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 17th July 2019

The UK’s official measure of unemployment is produced by the independent ONS and based on the International Labour Organisation’s long-standing definition of unemployment: persons without work, available for work in the next 2 weeks, and who have actively sought work in the last 4 weeks.

The latest available statistics were released by the ONS on 11 June 2019 and show an unemployment rate (for ages 16+) of 3.8% - the lowest since 1974. This statistic is estimated using responses to the Labour Force Survey and is unrelated to a person’s eligibility for social security benefits.

Reticulating Splines