The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated March 2010:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking for how long on average claimants aged between 18 and 24 years resident in each local authority area in the South East were in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance in (a) each of the last 12 months and (b) each of the last five years. (321449)
The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) is taken from the Jobcentre Plus administrative system. The length of a claim has been defined as the time between the start of an individual’s claim and the count date in each reference month. Table 1 shows the median length of live claims for persons aged 18 to 24 resident in each local authority in the South East during the last 12 months up to the latest available period in January 2010, and for January of each of the last 5 years. A copy of the table will be placed in the Library of the House.
National and local area estimates for many labour market statistics, including employment, unemployment and claimant count are available on the NOMIS website at:
http://www.nomisweb.co.uk