Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-02-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the correlation between the reduction in the rate of unemployment in the West Midlands between 2010 and 2016 and any trend in the number of people employed on zero-hour contracts in that region.

Priti Patel

Figures published by ONS show that rising employment in the West Midlands since 2010 – reflected in falling unemployment – has been dominated by more people in full-time and permanent jobs.

Information on trends in zero-hours contracts over this period is not available on a consistent basis. This reflects the view of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that responses to questions about zero-hours contracts in the Labour Force Survey are likely to have been affected by greater awareness of the term itself.