asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why it is not the practice of the Government to publish forecasts of employment and unemployment.

Forecasts of employment and unemployment can be made only on the basis of the expected growth of output in the economy as a whole, and a stable relationship between output growth and changes in employment and unemployment. But the relationship between output and employment has been particularly erratic in recent years and so any forecast of employment and unemployment would be subject to an enormous margin of error.