Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 28 February 2018 to Question 129428, what assessment he has made of the recent trends in (a) unemployment overall and (b) the number of unemployed women recorded in the figures from the Office for National Statistics published in February 2018.

The ONS estimates of short term changes to unemployment are subject to some uncertainty. As such it is more meaningful to look at longer term trends.

Since 2010 total unemployment has fallen by one million, and unemployment for women has fallen by 0.3 million. Alongside this, female employment has risen by around 1.5 million to a joint record of 15.1 million, and total employment has increased by 3 million.