To ask the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills how many people who have completed apprenticeships since 1997 are presently unemployed; and how many of these are long-term unemployed. (205321)

The Annual Population Survey (APS) can be used to provide estimates about the labour market status of people who have completed an apprenticeship. It does not collect information about when the apprenticeship was completed and does not distinguish between publicly funded and other types of apprenticeship. Estimates from the APS show that of those people in England aged 16-35 in 2006 who had completed an apprenticeship 22,000 were unemployed according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition. This represents an ILO unemployment rate of 3.3 per cent. Around 8,000 of the 22,000 had been ILO unemployed for at least six months