Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people working less than 16 hours who wanted to work more in each of the last 10 years.

I refer the Hon Member to the answer given to PQ 4936 in which I give details, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), of the number of people whose usual weekly hours are less than six hours, and between 6 and 15 hours. Details are not available for the number of people working less than 16 hours who wanted to work more in each of the last 10 years.

ONS does publish some related data: 1) the number of people in employment who want to work more hours, are available for work and are currently working below the hours threshold (40 hours a week for those under 18, 48 hours a week for those aged 18 or over), and 2) people working part-time who gave the reason as “could not find full-time job” as reason for working part-time. The tables below give extracts from the ONS published data, however, both these data series will include both those working less than, and more than, 16 hours a week.

Table 1: The number of people in employment who want to work more hours, are available for work and are currently working below the hours threshold

Source: Table EMP16, ONS, Labour Force Survey

Table 2: Part-time workers who gave the reason as “could not find full-time job” as reason for working part-time

Source: Table EMP01NSA, ONS, Labour Force Survey

At UK level people in full-time work have made up over three quarters of the overall increase in employment since 2010.