ONS Labour Market Statistics on Nomis

by Bob Watson and Sinclair Sutherland

All about me

• Bob Watson• Worked at the Office for National Statistics

(ONS) or its predecessors for 25 years• Business Surveys, Financial Inquiries, National

Accounts, Labour Market

• Worked on Labour Market Statistics for more than 10 years

• Been involved with Nomis for 8 years

UK Statistics Authority

• an independent body operating at arm's length from government as a non-ministerial department

• directly accountable to Parliament• promote and safeguard the production and

publication of official statistics that serve the public good

• does not deal with policy• oversight of ONS

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

• independent of ministers and instead report through the UK Statistics Authority to Parliament and the devolved administrations

• collection, compilation, analysis and dissemination of a range of key economic, social and demographic statistics

• does not deal with policy

Nomis

• part of the ONS web estate, for the dissemination of official statistics

• operated on behalf of the ONS by the University of Durham

• houses a range of government statistical information

• has been disseminating statistics for 35 years

Nomis – Current Data

• Annual Civil Service Employment Survey• Annual Population Survey/Labour Force Survey• Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings• Business Register Employment Survey• Census of Population• Claimant Count• DWP Benefits• Jobcentre Plus Vacancies (discontinued)• Jobs Density• Population Estimates• UK Business Counts• VAT Registrations and Stocks (discontinued)• Workforce Jobs

Annual Population Survey (APS)/Labour Force Survey (LFS)

• LFS is a survey of households living at private addresses in the UK

• Its purpose is to provide information on the UK labour market

• Interviews with around 100,000 individuals in 40,000 households every three months

• APS is an annual dataset using certain LFS interviews with some additional boost interviews

• APS dataset has around 320,000 individuals

LFS/APS and Policy

• APS is part funded by a number of government departments

• Some questions/topics are required by European legislation

• Some questions/topics are to meet wider policy needs of the funding departments

• Topics include:labour market status, employment details, education/qualifications, benefits, health, country of birth/ethnicity/nationality, well being

APS Sample Size

• 320,000 people• 200,000 people aged 16 to 64 years• 500 people per local authority• 25 unemployed people per local authority• 10 unemployed youth per local authority

• ...and I wanted to look at differences in qualifications of young unemployed males and females in my local authority

LFS and Zero Hours ContractsHow hard can it be to measure?

• people are not generally employed on “zero hours contracts” – but they may have a contract that does not guarantee a minimum number of hours

• a question regarding special working hours arrangement asks whether hours are:

flexitime; annualised hours; term-time; job share; nine-day fortnight; four-and-a-half-day week; zero hours contract; on-call; none of the above

• reminder – LFS is a household survey, interviewing individuals

• the interviewee needs to know about their contract of employment, have heard about zero hour contracts, and recognise that their contract of employment is a zero hour contract

• 5 years ago hardly anyone had heard of zero hour contracts, so hardly anyone was saying they were on zero hour contracts

• some of the initial growth in reported zero hour contracts is due to growth in awareness

Claimant Count

• Claimant Count is the number of live claims for benefit principally for the reason of being unemployed

• Until April 2013 this was measured using the number of claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)

• From April 2013 the new Universal Credit pathfinders started

• Some live claims for benefit principally for the reason of being unemployed were UC claims rather than JSA claims

• Statistical information on UC claimants was not available

Claimant Count

• May 2013 - Statistical information on UC claimants was not available

• Claimant Count based on JSA only - undercount• Speed of rollout was slow, so impact was initially small• All series available on this basis

• Dec 2013 - Statistical information on all UC claimants became available

• Claimant Count based on JSA plus UC – overcount because not all UC claimants unemployed

• Overcount likely to be closer than undercount• Only headline measures on this basis

Claimant Count

• Nov 2014 - Statistical information on out-of-work UC claimants became available

• Claimant Count based on JSA plus out-of-work UK – overcount because not all UC claimants unemployed

• Initially overcount smaller than previous overcount, but overcount growing as rollout scope widens

• A wider range of measures available inc local and age• From late 2015 - a Nomis dataset available on this basis

allowing for age band and geographic exploration

• ??? 2016 – Statistical information on unemployed UC claimants may become available

• Fingers crossed

New Datasets for Nomis

• ONS will continue to use Nomis for statistical dissemination for the foreseeable future

• We are looking to maximise the use of Nomis for suitable datasets

• Claimant Count• Population Estimates• Mortality Statistics• More ASHE data• Marriages• Births• Others (external)

Thanks for listening

Bob Watson

Subnational Labour Market

Office for National Statistics

Bob.Watson@ons.gov.uk

Sinclair Sutherland

Nomis

University of Durham

www.nomisweb.co.uk