As is becoming increasingly apparent from news reports, the UK is becoming a nation of part time workers. As the BBC noted yesterday:
ONS data revealed that 1.46 million people were working part-time because they could not find a full-time job, an increase of 24,000 over the quarter and the highest figure since records began in 1992.
Almost a third of working men are in part-time employment because they cannot find a full-time job, compared with 13% of women.
Curiosity made me wonder about the accuracy of this data, so I did an FoI request to enquire about the source of the information. The original is here. The slightly edited response (removing some jargon) is:
1. Might you please supply documentation that shows how the ONS define self-employment?
Estimates of self-employment published by the ONS are sourced from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS is a household survey and respondents who have established that one hours paid work has been undertaken in the past week ('the reference week') are asked questions relating to their employment status, via the following questions:
Did you do any paid work in the 7 days ending Sunday the [date], either as an employee or as self-employed?
1 yes
2 no
APPLIES IF ANSWER = 1
Were you working as an employee or were you self-employed?
1 Employee
2 Self-employed
3 Government Scheme
4 Unpaid family worker
The definition of self-employment is based on the respondents view of the type of work they do.
2. How is full time and part time self-employment differentiated by the ONS? Please supply documentary evidence of the methodologies used.
As with establishing employment status, full-time and part-time status is self classified by the respondent via the following question:
In your main job were you working...
1 Full time
2 Or part time
The definition of full- or part-time employment is based on the respondents view of the amount of work they do. It is not related to the hours worked during the reference week.
So, the fact this is a perceptions index, not a matter of fact.
And the perception really is that people think they are working part time or this fact would not be recorded.
It's not a wholly reliable way to deliver data, but over time is probably consistent in its trend data. But that comment at the end is important: part time work is not defined by the hours actually worked, which will surprise most people, I suspect.
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How accurate is Cameron when he says that a million jobs have been created by the private sector since 2010?
Does he include people going from unemployment to self employed (possibly part time)?
People going from public employment to private as when e.g. hospital lab work or police payrole functions are transferred to the private sector?
Students going into work?
Or people hired to replace those retiring?
Surely it’s not total numbers of people in work. I’m getting rather mistrustful in my old age.
Based on what I’m finding the answer is that the estimate may be seriously inaccurate – and may not be
It’s really not clear
…or people placed in schemes and who leave the unemployment register for 3 months or more!
Interesting that the ONS uses the LFS interviewees’ own perception of the work they do as “full time” or “part time” as the basis for the headline measure of full-time/part-time. The LFS also collects a number of measures of hours worked (usual hours worked, actual hours worked in the interview week, including and excluding overtime, etc.) and so it would be possible to do a full-time/part-time split using a more objective hours measure. Someone may have already done this; if not, I may well have a look at the data and run some analyses of it when I get a spare couple of hours sometime.
And when you do it will need to receive considerable publicity
Now we need to know about self employment…..
More on that tomorrow
Looks like the same problem in the US, albeit for other reasons.
I had an ‘interesting’ experience recently apropos self-employed status: I’m on ESA but have been doing what is termed ‘permitted work’ of £30 a week as I am intending to build my work capability up as I recover from illness. Without informing me, the DWP cut all my benefits (because they thought I has gone over my year’s limit of ‘permitted work’) . I then phoned them to be informed I was now technically ‘self-employed on £30 a week (two hour’s work). This was clearly an attempt to guillotine benefits at the first opportunity without consultation and, hey-presto, you’ve created an ’employed person’.
Richard
I think this is quite interesting. In, I suppose, the way Simon used the word.
A few months ago I heard a Labour MP allege that he’d been advised that private-sector contractors to the DWP were encouraging people to cease claiming JSA & start claiming to be self-employed but, obviously, on such low income that they’d continue to receive benefits.
I haven’t heard any more & the allegation may, of course, have been false, but it fits in with Martin Wolf’s astonishment, in the FT, that our individual output has dropped like a stone in that we have, supposedly, more people in work than ever before but a GDP lower than in 2008.