asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism if an interdepartmental committee to review procedures for compiling and publishing job loss statistics information has been established; if so, the frequency of its meetings; if it will issue a report; and if the report will be published.
Written Answers. - Job Loss Statistics.
22.
An interdepartmental committee, chaired by my Department, has undertaken a study of the available data relating to job losses in manufacturing industry. The position in this regard is that there are no definite statistics of job loss; the notifications by employers to the Minister for Labour of pending qualified redundancies are the only official notifications relating to job loss. The purpose of the present study is to obtain a reliable estimate of the incidence of permanent job loss in the figures of gross changes in employment thrown up by employment surveys. As these surveys are conducted on a confidential basis, the results of the study will not be published. The outcome of the study will not provide a definitive set of statistics of job loss but is expected to add significantly to existing departmental information for the purposes of analysing changes in manufacturing employment.