The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Colin Mowl, dated 26 February 2008:
The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about the employment rate for (a) lone parents, (b) the disabled and (c) the over-50s in each year since 1997. I am replying in her absence. (189320)
The attached table gives the employment rates for the categories requested for the three month period ending June each year 1997 to 2007. Comparable estimates are not available for 1997 for disabled workers and 1998 and 2000 for all categories.
A historical series of lone parent employment rates is published in the ‘Work and worklessness among households’ First Release, which is available on the National Statistics website: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=8552.
The LFS estimates at this detailed level are consistent with the UK population estimates published in February and March 2003, whereas those in the Labour Market Statistics First Release are based on more up-to-date population figures.
As with any sample survey, estimates from the LFS are subject to a margin of uncertainty.
Lone parents2,3 Disabled workers2,4 People aged 50 and over 1997 44.6 5— 32.9 1999 47.9 46.2 34.3 2001 51.4 46.6 35.3 2002 53.2 47.9 35.8 2003 52.9 48.8 37.0 2004 54.2 49.7 37.2 2005 56.0 49.7 37.6 2006 56.3 50.0 38.2 2007 57.1 49.7 38.4 1 Expressed as the total number of people in employment in each category as a percentage of the total number of people in each category. The base for the lone parent percentages excludes people with unknown employment status. 2 Men aged 16 to 64 and women aged 16 to 59. 3 Working age people with dependant children under 16 and those children aged 16 to 18 who are never-married and in full-time education. 4 Includes those who have a long term disability which substantially limits their day-to-day activities and those who have a long term disability which affects the kind or amount of work they might do. 5 Comparable estimates for 1997 are not available for disabled people. Source: ONS Labour Force Survey