asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many firms in Wales were affected by short-time working in the first quarter of 1975; and what is the estimated total of working days lost.

As regards the first part of the Question I regret that information is not available in the form requested. However, in mid-April 88 firms in Wales were known by my Department to have some or all of their employees on short-time working. Comparable information about the number of working days lost as a result of short-time working is not available.

Following is the information:

asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many redundancies in Wales were announced in 1974 and during the first quarter of 1975.

I am informed by the Manpower Services Commission that redundancies involving some 6,990 people were notified as due to occur in Wales in 1974. The equivalent figure for the first quarter of 1975 was 3,920. In addition, a further 5,990 redundancies have been notified as due to occur in the remainder of 1975 or later.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will bring the figures for Wales in the analysis of unemployment by age and duration, published in the August 1974 Department of Employment Gazette, up to date for February 1975.

I regret that the information is not available. The unemployment figures on an age and duration basis are normally obtained in January and July each year, but it has not been possible to prepare the figures for January 1975 owing to industrial action at local offices of the Employment Service Agency.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many unfilled reported vacancies there were in Wales in March each year since 1965.

The following table shows the information for March each year. The statistics relate only to vacancies notified to employment offices and careers offices and are not a measure of total vacancies.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment (1) what is the latest estimate of average hourly earnings for male and female manual and non-manual workers in Wales; and if he will compare these figures with those of 12 months earlier;(2) what is the latest estimate of average weekly earnings for male and female manual and non-manual workers in Wales; and if he will compare these figures with those 12 months earlier.

The latest figures for manual workers are those from the Department's annual October inquiry into earnings and hours of manual workers.

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what was the average weekly number of hours worked by full-time adults in (a) Wales and (b) Great Britain, in each year since

asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish a table in the Official Report showing the indices of (a) average gross weekly earnings of both manual and non-manual full-time adult workers in Wales and (b) retail prices for January of each year since 1970.

The following earnings indices are based on New Earnings Survey estimates of the average gross weekly earnings of full-time adults employed in Wales and whose pay for the relevant survey pay period in April was not affected by absence. As earnings estimates for January are not available, the retail price indices are also shown relating to April; they are based on the official General Index of Retail Prices. 1970 and in each quarter since the first quarter of 1974.

In industries covered by the Department's annual October inquiry into earnings and hours of manual workers, the average weekly hours worked by full-time manual men aged 21 and over in the particular inquiry weeks were:

asked the Secretary of State for Employment how many people are currently unemployed in the construction industry in Wales.

At 10th March 1975 there were 12,202 unemployed people in Wales who last worked in construction.