13 SEPTEMBER 1986, Page 27

Vacant figures

Sir: Arthur Seldon is right (The Economy, 23 August) that a million or so alleged unemployed are, in fact, working busily in the black economy. What he omitted to say was that the vacancy figures are also nonsense. They are produced by the De- partment of Employment who multiply by three the number of vacancies reported to the Job Centres. As hardly anybody re- ports vacancies to Job Centres, this un- orthodox method of achieving statistics is wildly out.

William Guest

1 Fitzroy Road, Tankerton, Kent