The Scottish Government’s Quality Assessment of the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey data for Scotland

7 Concepts and Definitions

Rates: Rates represent the proportion of the population or subgroup with a certain characteristic. They allow changes in the labour market to be interpreted in a wider context by accounting for changes in the population or the number of people who are economically active. Rates can be calculated for different age groups.

For headline employment, economic activity and economic inactivity, the reference population is those aged 16 to 64. For unemployment, the reference population is the active population aged 16 and over. Thus, people aged 65 and over who continue to be economically active are included in the base while those who are economically inactive will not.

Economically active: The population who are either in employment or unemployed.

Economically inactive: People not in employment and who do not meet the criteria for unemployment. This group includes:

• those who want a job but who have not been seeking work in the last 4 weeks
• those who want a job and are seeking work but not available to start
• those who do not want a job

For example, students not working or seeking work and those in retirement.

Employment: There are two main ways of looking at employment: the number of people with jobs or the number of jobs. These two concepts represent different things as one person can have more than one job. The number of people in employment is measured via the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey and consists of those aged 16 and over.

Employment measures the number of people who did at least one hour of paid work or had a job they were temporarily away from. People who do unpaid work in a family business and people on Government-supported training and employment programs are also included. This is in accordance with the International Labour Organisation definition.

Unemployment: The International Labour Organisation definition of unemployment covers people who are 16 years and over:

• without a job, have been actively seeking work in the past four weeks and are available to start work in the next fortnight

or

• out of work, have accepted a job and are waiting to start it in the next two weeks

Employment rate: The proportion of people aged between 16 and 64 years who are in employment.

Unemployment rate: The proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who are unemployed.

Economic inactivity rate: The proportion of people aged between 16 and 64 years who are economically inactive.

Model Based Unemployment: In 2003, Office for National Statistics developed a statistical model to improve small area estimates of unemployment. Supplementary information from the claimant count is included in the estimates. Claimant count is a count of the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance and Universal Credit claimants in the "searching for work" conditionality group. As it is an administrative measure, information is known for all areas. It is also highly correlated with unemployment. The model is said to borrow strength from the claimant count. The model also includes a socio-economic indicator and a random area effect.

More information about the methodology can be found in the ONS Model Based Unemployment Guidance.

Sex: Sex is self-reported by respondents participating in the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey. No documentation is asked for by the interviewer or provided by the respondent. Hence, analysis is based on 'sex' rather than 'gender'.

Disability: From 2014, the definition of disability is based on the 2010 Equality Act definition. This harmonised definition is based on self-reported health conditions. A condition will have lasted 12 months or more and have a substantial impact on a person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

The 2010 Equality Act superseded the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995, for Great Britain but not Northern Ireland. The DDA was the basis of the published APS estimates prior to 2013.

Ethnicity: Questions on ethnic group have been asked in the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey since its start in 2004. Changes made in January and April 2011 brought the questions in line with 2011 Census data. As such, a break in the series exists before 2011 and only data from 2011 onwards is included.

When asked "what is your ethnic group?" respondents have the following options to choose from:

• "White"
• "Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups"
• "Asian/Asian Scottish/Asian British"
• "African"
• "Caribbean or Black"
• "Arab"
• "Other ethnic group"

Other questions ask for more detail about respondent's ethnic group. Yet it is often not possible to publish detailed estimates due to the robustness of the sample.

Historically, we have published ethnicity estimates grouped as “White Groups” and “Minority Ethnic Group”. These groups are defined as follows:

• "Minority Ethnic" includes “Mixed or Multiple”; “Asian”; “African”; “Caribbean or Black”; “Arab”, and “Other ethnic groups”. It describes all ethnic groups excluding those who answered “White” to the first question.
• “White” includes ethnic groups such as “White – Polish” and “White – Gypsy or Irish Traveller”. These ethnic groups may also suffer labour market disadvantages.

The term “Minority Ethnic” aids narrative and provides a concise terminology. Following work for the 2021 Censuses in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland’s Census 2022, and work being undertaken by the Office for National Statistics to transform the Labour Force Survey, we expect there to be a move away from the binary representation of ethnicity towards the following five category classification:

• White Groups
• Mixed and/or Multiple Groups
• Asian Groups
• African, Caribbean, or Black Groups
• Other Groups

The analysis in this paper considers the five category definition and has been applied to the 2019 and 2023 estimates.

Further information Further information on Classifications and harmonisation is available on the ONS website.

Box Plot Charts: These types of charts provide a quick way to understand how a set of estimates are distributed. It shows where most of the estimates are, how spread out they are, and whether the data is skewed in a particular direction.

The box is the main part of the chart shows the middle 50% of the estimates. The top and bottom edges of the box represent the upper quartile and lower quartile which are the points where 25% and 75% of the estimates fall.

The line inside the box marks the median (the middle value of the estimates). If the median is close to the top of the box it is negatively skewed (more data in concentrated to the top of the box) whereas if the median is close to the bottom of the box it is positively skewed (more data in concentrated to the bottom of the box).

The lines extending from both ends of the box show the smallest and largest estimates. These lines help show the overall range of the estimates. If one line is longer than the other, it means the data is more spread out in the direction of the larger line.

When comparing two box plots:

• If one median is higher than the other, that data typically has higher values
• If one box is bigger than the other, the larger box has more variation in the middle 50% of data and the smaller box means the values are more consistent