Office for National Statistics

Knowledge Economy & Productivity Branch, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor

Room 1.163

Office for National Statistics (Newport)

Government Buildings

Cardiff Road

Newport

South Wales 

NP10 8XG

Employee hours and Workers data.

NACE Rev. 2

The survey covers Sectors A to U

Productivity hours – a data series created by multiplying the productivity jobs series at industry level by the actual hours worked for the industry recorded in the LFS. The resulting data series consists of the number of hours worked at the industry level.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/economy/productivity-measures/productivity-handbook/glossary/index.html

Reporting Unit: Employment surveys, the enterprise or the activities of a specified list of local units belongs to an enterprise are used as the reporting unit.  Very often the latter of these is close to the KAU.  LFS - households.

Observation unit(s): Employment surveys - same as the reporting unit, namely the enterprise or a list of local units.  LFS - Individuals.

Businesses are drawn from a total number of 1.24 million businesses Aprox, within the UK (production) and Great Britain (services) industries. The Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR), the sampling database for business surveys, cover 99% of all econmic activities in the UK and constently updated to account for any current/future demographic changes.

Data used to compile the hours worked indicators are collected separately for Great Britain and Northern Ireland but in a harmonised and integrated manner.

The indicator has been compiled from 1998 Q1 onwards.

Not applicable.

Number of hours worked and workers.

Quarterly

Statistics of Trade Act 1947

Not available

The code of practice can be visited at

http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/ 

Statistical disclosure control methodology is applied to the Labour Productivity data. This ensures that information attributable to an individual or individual organisation is not identifiable in any published outputs. The Code of Practice for Official Statistics and specifically the Principle on Confidentiality set out practices for how we protect data from being disclosed. The Principle includes the statement that ONS outputs should “ensure that official statistics do not reveal the identity of an individual or organisation, or any private information relating to them, taking into account other relevant sources of information”. Further information on how the ONS safeguards confidentiality  is contained within the code of practice document on page 9, using the following link:

http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/

Labour Productivity release dates are published on the ONS website for the 12 months ahead.

The ONS release calender is available here:http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/release-calendar/index.html

The data is released on the ONS website and at press briefing both at 9:30 on the release date. Access is granted to a selection of key government users 24 hours ahead of release. These users include: Bank of England; HM Treasury; Departement of Business, Innovation and skills; Prime Minister. Data are sent to Eurostat using GESMES format on the day after National dissemination. However full details of pre-release granted is published at the ONS official site:

http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/about-the-authority/uk-statistical-system/legislation/pre-release-access/index.html

Quarterly

No news release is produced for Labour Productivity but a statistical bulletin is published on the day of release.

Labour Productivity is published on a quarterly basis in a Statistical Bulletin and statistical summary, on the ONS  Official web-site

The Labour Productivity data set is available online in the ONS official site:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/index.html?content-type=Dataset&edition=tcm%3A77-331662

Not available

Data are sent to Eurostat on the day following release.

Articles are published on the Office for National Statistics website and web links are shown at the following link.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/economy/productivity-measures/index.html

A summary quality report for Labour Productivity can now be found on the ONS website:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/quality/quality-information/economy/index.html

ONS has developed Guidelines for Measuring Statistical Quality ; these are based upon the European Statistical System (ESS) quality dimensions. - More information can be found on the ONS website, see the following link for further details

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/quality/guidelines-for-measuring-statistical-quality/index.html

The work the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is undertaking to monitor the quality of published statistics, and develop improvements to existing data can be found in the following link:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/quality/index.html

Furthermore the UK Statistics Authority publishes a report on each assessment it carries out. The assessment for Labour Productivity Statistics can be found in the following link:

http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/assessment/assessment-reports/assessment-report-196---statistics-on-labour-productivity.pdf

Labour Productivity measures the amount of real (inflation-adjusted) economic output that is produced by a unit of labour input (in terms of workers, jobs and hours worked) and is a key indicator of economic performance.  Since labour costs account for around two-thirds of the cost of production of UK economic output, unit labour costs provide an indication of inflationary pressures in the economy.

ONS holds an annual Productivity Statistics User Group to meet with users of productivity statistics to explain developments and gain an understanding of users needs. 

An information note on the last Productivity Statistics User Group can be found at the following link:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/economy/productivity-measures/productivity-articles/index.html 

All STS requirements are fulfilled

Small sampling error can be observed (14.2); the response rate of 90% guarantees a reasonably good accuracy (14.3).

Sampling error occurs because estimates are based on a sample rather than a census. Sampling error of the main data source the MBS is measured internally at the point where results are made final and are passed for the purpose of estimating IOP. For the monthly turnover estimate for the whole of the MBS, coefficients of variation around 1.0 - 2.0% are usual. Coefficients of variation are calculated both at the sampled level of industry and at the aggregated level of industry that is published in TOPSI. High coefficients of variation are rare but are always investigated at the individual business level to determine the cause. Coefficients of variation will in future, be published as part of the MBS Basic Quality Information (BQI) document, following a review of their production.

Employer surveys - a response rate of 82% can be observed at the time of the first publication rising to a final rate of 90%.

They are published by the ONS approximately 16 weeks after the reference period.  Employment surveys are sent out shortly before the end of the reference month.  LFS data collection is carried out continuously throughout a thirteen week period.

The Labour Productivity output including data is published at 9:30 am on the day of release and is always punctual.

International standards such as the System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA 93)10 and the European System of Accounts 1995 (ESA 95)11 and definitions are used in the production of the IoP and applied in the whole country, to ensure comparability. Further more at the end of 2013, ONS started to provided Euro-Stat with IOP at four digit SIC.  At present, IoP data at the NACE 4 digit level are marked as confidential as they are unpublished in the UK. ONS plans to publish these once further development work has been undertaken to improve the quality (Eurostat has already been informed of this work). Once these data have been cleared for publication in the UK, the confidential marker will be removed.

Every effort is made to ensure that the series is comparable over time, and a comparable time series is available back to 1948. Where possible, changes to methodology are applied to the whole series to ensure this comparability is maintained.

The IOP data are derived from Monthly Business Survey (MBS). There is no internal comparable monthly source, but after two years when annual turnover becomes available from the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI), checks can be undertaken to ensure consistency between the 12 monthly returns and the data returns from large businesses. Also Data from the IoP are a direct input to the quarterly GDP dataset. Thisindicates that the datasets are entirely consistent with no quality adjustments made to the production data within GDP.

There is no comparable monthly source,see 17.1. All component data are consistent with the relevant aggregates into which they feed. Additionally, all adjusted annual data are equal to the unadjusted annual data for the equivalent series.

Not available

The National Accounts revisions policy is designed to give users a clear understanding of which periods are open for revision at each data release and why incorporating revisions from a single source is not a simple matter. For further informations on ONS revisions Policies for Economic Statistics, see the link below::

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/revisions/revisions-policies-by-theme/economy/index.html

See IOP releases, page 17 for further information regarding revisions and vintage database:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/iop/index-of-production/index.html

The National Accounts revisions policy is designed to give users a clear understanding of which periods are open for revision at each data release and why incorporating revisions from a single source is not a simple matter. Furthermore  information about revisions is regularly published in the background notes of the monthly IOP statistical bulletin. Notification of major changes in methodology are also published if occure. See recent IOP releases, page 17 for further information regarding revisions:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/iop/index-of-production/index.html

The indicator is compiled from several sources including business-based employee jobs estimates and population based LFS hours data.

Employee surveys - quarterly.

LFS - collection is carried out continuously throughout a thirteen week period and data compilation of three-monthly averages is done quarterly.

The employer surveys are postal surveys.  The LFS survey is carried out by personal interview.

The MBS uses an editing and validation approach known as selective editing. Selective editing is an internationally recognised method that uses a data based approach to assess the influence of business estimates on the aggregate outputs. See, Guide to the Index of Production, using the following link:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/economy/index-of-production/methods/index.html

The chain volume measures of IoP are annually re-weighted chained (Laspeyres weights) whose index numbers areweighted arithmetic means of price (or other)relatives, using value (or equivalent).indices referenced to current price values, currently in 2010. A Laspeyres index is a fixed base index For each year, the values for each SUT in current prices and previous year prices are calculated. These values are then aggregated using weights for each SUT industry derived from fully balanced Quarterly National Accounts supply and use table (SUT) level, see the following link for further detail:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/naa2/quarterly-national-accounts/index.html

Each year the series is re-referenced and comparability with previous years is achieved by chain-linking the series together to form a continuous time series.

Hours worked series which show seasonality or need to be adjusted for working days are modified using X-12 ARIMA.

Not available.