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The Impact of Disclosure Control on Labour Market Statistics (& other issues)– the User’s Gripes. Jill Tuffnell Head of Research Cambridgeshire County Council Local Authority lead, Labour Market Statistics CLIP Group. Overview of Impact. The Labour Market
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The Impact of Disclosure Control on Labour Market Statistics (& other issues)– the User’s Gripes Jill Tuffnell Head of Research Cambridgeshire County Council Local Authority lead, Labour Market Statistics CLIP Group
Overview of Impact • The Labour Market • Workplace population & industry sectors • Commuting • Unemployment • Residents of working age • Ethnicity & Religion • Inconsistencies • Census & other Official Statistics on the labour market • Conclusions
The Labour Market – Workplace data requirements • Industry sector employment data required: • Regional & local planning; the basis of employment forecasts for sub-regions • Regeneration areas • Wards & Districts • Industry sectors
Labour Market Census– Workplace (1) • Greater Cambridge sub-region has a workforce of 327,900 – but NO industry breakdown from Standard Tables in Census 2001! NO industry data for wards • Benchmarking problems with ABI: No employee/self-employed split for workplace population by industry sector, even for districts. • No published data below broad industry groups FOR ANY GEOGRAPHY, (what will commissioned tables provide?): means NO breakdown of manufacturing, ‘business activities’, retail & wholesale trade; transport & communications etc even for districts.
Labour Market Census – Workplace (2) • East of England Labour Market Census project • There are 96 identified sub-regions – not one has industry sector workplace employment data, as all are based on wards • No industry cluster data available • Impossible to prepare reports on the region’s key industries: transport, hi-tech manufacturing; tourism; R&D, computer services, communications, even at a district level
Labour Market Census - Commuting • Output Areas totally unreliable for our purposes • Even ward based analysis presents problems e.g. former Cambridgeshire; • Ward ‘origin’ employed residents: 349,590 • Former county Standard Table emp res: 348,980 • Ward ‘destination’ workplace population: 359,584 • Former county Standard Table work. Pop: 359,124 Problems are greater for smaller areas – e.g. Districts, wards No commuting flows by industry
Labour Market Census - Unemployment • No Standard Table with economically active & unemployed covering all residents by gender & age; (‘student’ problem) • Unemployed is derived from two Standard Tables – but which two? ‘Employed’ resident totals differ significantly • Example of Abbey ward in Cambridge – large population, with over 4,250 employed residents; are there any elderly unemployed females at all? • Data problems are even greater for smaller wards
Labour Market Census – Residents of Working Age • Industry sector employment only available at broad level • Should be basis for calibrating with Labour Force Survey, Incapacity Benefit claimants etc • Should establish base-lines for Development Agencies, Learning & Skills Councils, Connexions etc • Problems with disclosure affect age/gender breakdown of economically inactive; ‘small number syndrome’
Ethnicity & Religion - Census • Small numbers involved in most of Cambridgeshire, (only 1,130 non-white population in Fenland district) • High imputation rates • Swapped records • Disclosure control • Do the results mean anything? – definitely not for wards or Output Areas in most of Cambs
Inconsistencies - Census • Different totals from different tables • Small geographies do not add to large geographies • Disproportionate impact on small area data – which is the chief value of the census count • Disproportionate impact on small counts – and hence aggregates of those counts
Census & Other ONS data • Claimant unemployment count is now subject to disclosure control – small numbers renders it useless for analysis by age/gender for many wards • Likely to be the same problem with Incapacity Benefit data • The Census is the only reliable data set for small area workplace statistics – yet we cannot calibrate it at ward level against the ABI or IDBR • Still no idea of what may be available from commissioned tables; likely to be minimal
Conclusions • Census now almost 4 years old – so whose confidentiality are we respecting? • Far more detail published in 1991 from a 10% sample about workplaces and industries • Disclosure control applied to individual businesses has seriously diminished the value of the Census; it appears no ward data has been published because one school constitutes the ‘education’ sector • There appears to be no sound official statistical series on workplace population at an industry level; how are we expected to monitor and plan for employment?