Labour market tables

Producing a set of labour market tables is a key ESCoE priority. The System of National Accounts (SNA) guidance suggests covering four quadrants within these: jobs, people, volumes and payments. Many of the components of these accounts are reasonably straightforward to populate but there are areas where additional conceptual and data exploration is necessary.

Previous work on labour market tables suggests that different data sources and concepts can give quite varying descriptions of labour input; measuring hours worked was found to be particularly problematic as these can vary enormously depending on whether the data source is firms (e,g. Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings) or individuals (e.g. Annual Population Survey/Labour Force Survey). How to deal with self-employed income is also a controversial topic.

This project will work closely with ONS colleagues to develop these accounts, drawing on a range of sources. It will use the data to gauge their implications for the operation of the labour market and how sensitive these findings are to the data and assumptions employed.

The first stage of the project will be a scoping paper. This will review methodologies in use in other countries, data sources based on existing ONS work and potential alternative sources, and a set of recommendations.

The second stage will be an analysis of the operation of the labour market using a range of indicators and methods. This may include international comparisons.

The final stage will examine alternative data sources, primarily Time Use Surveys. There is evidence that the intensity of work has been rising over time, due to computerisation, changes in work design and rising expectations from managers and customers. Labour market tables offer the opportunity to capture a variety of measures of labour input. These include the total duration of the working day, the total time spent on work rather than other activities such as breaks, and the frequency of work interruptions. Combining this with data on the location of work and commuting will provide more nuanced measures of labour input. This final stage will also include recommendations on how alternative data sources might be flexibly incorporated in labour market tables.

This project will:

• Inform ONS research on populating the Labour Chapter in the revised SNA (System of National Accounts).
• Provide a framework for reconciling different measures of the labour market (e.g. employment and jobs) and different sources (e.g. admin data, business surveys and Labour Force Survey).
• Improve the coherence between labour market and National Accounts data.
• Provide a framework for assessing new labour market data sources.