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?