Textual analysis of responses from the Business Impacts of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (BICS), providing further insights into the experiences of individual businesses.

Findings from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey for England.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a major survey series, which aims to provide data that can produce reliable estimates at the local authority level. Key topics covered in the survey include education, employment, health and ethnicity. The APS comprises key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), all its associated LFS boosts and the APS boost. The APS aims to provide enhanced annual data for England, covering a target sample of at least 510 economically active persons for each Unitary Authority (UA)/Local Authority District (LAD) and at least 450 in each Greater London Borough. In combination with local LFS boost samples, the survey provides estimates for a range of indicators down to Local Education Authority (LEA) level across the United Kingdom.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. The affected datasets have now been updated. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

APS Well-Being Datasets
From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Further information on the transition can be found in the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 article on the ONS website.

APS disability variables
Over time, there have been some updates to disability variables in the APS. An article explaining the quality assurance investigations on these variables that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage.

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (June 2025) updated versions of the weighting variables NPWT22, PIWTA22 and PWTA22 were added to the study. The reason for the adjustment is an issue ONS identified during a recent review of the weighting method, related to the application of the non-response adjustment for boost cases. In addition, the variable YLESS20 was also updated, and DIFFHR6 was replaced with DIFFHR20. Previously missing imputed values for 'IOUTCOME=6' cases have been added.

This page is no longer updated. It has been superseded by the Business insights and impacts on the UK economy dataset page (see link in Notices). It contains comprehensive weighted datasets for Wave 7 onwards. All future BICS datasets will be available there. The datasets on this page include mainly unweighted responses from the voluntary fortnightly business survey, which captures businesses’ responses on how their turnover, workforce prices, trade and business resilience have been affected in the two-week reference period, up to Wave 17.

The Business Structure Database (BSD) contains a small number of variables for almost all business organisations in the UK. The BSD is derived primarily from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), which is a live register of data collected by HM Revenue and Customs via VAT and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. The IDBR data are complimented with data from ONS business surveys. If a business is liable for VAT (turnover exceeds the VAT threshold) and/or has at least one member of staff registered for the PAYE tax collection system, then the business will appear on the IDBR (and hence in the BSD). In 2004 it was estimated that the businesses listed on the IDBR accounted for almost 99 per cent of economic activity in the UK. Only very small businesses, such as the self-employed were not found on the IDBR.

The IDBR is frequently updated, and contains confidential information that cannot be accessed by non-civil servants without special permission. However, the ONS Virtual Micro-data Laboratory (VML) created and developed the BSD, which is a 'snapshot' in time of the IDBR, in order to provide a version of the IDBR for research use, taking full account of changes in ownership and restructuring of businesses. The 'snapshot' is taken around April, and the captured point-in-time data are supplied to the VML by the following September. The reporting period is generally the financial year. For example, the 2000 BSD file is produced in September 2000, using data captured from the IDBR in April 2000. The data will reflect the financial year of April 1999 to March 2000. However, the ONS may, during this time, update the IDBR with data on companies from its own business surveys, such as the Annual Business Survey (SN 7451).

The data are divided into 'enterprises' and 'local units'. An enterprise is the overall business organisation. A local unit is a 'plant', such as a factory, shop, branch, etc. In some cases, an enterprise will only have one local unit, and in other cases (such as a bank or supermarket), an enterprise will own many local units.

For each company, data are available on employment, turnover, foreign ownership, and industrial activity based on Standard Industrial Classification (SIC)92, SIC 2003 or SIC 2007. Year of 'birth' (company start-up date) and 'death' (termination date) are also included, as well as postcodes for both enterprises and their local units. Previously only pseudo-anonymised postcodes were available but now all postcodes are real.

The ONS is continually developing the BSD, and so researchers are strongly recommended to read all documentation pertaining to this dataset before using the data.

Linking to Other Business Studies
These data contain IDBR reference numbers. These are anonymous but unique reference numbers assigned to business organisations. Their inclusion allows researchers to combine different business survey sources together. Researchers may consider applying for other business data to assist their research.

Latest Edition Information
For the sixteenth edition (March 2024), data files and a variable catalogue document for 2023 have been added.

Weighted estimates from the voluntary fortnightly Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) about financial performance, workforce, prices, trade, and business resilience. These are official statistics in development.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) household datasets are produced annually and are available from 2004 (Special Licence) and 2006 (End User Licence). They allow production of family and household labour market statistics at local areas and for small sub-groups of the population across the UK. The household data comprise key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the APS 'person' datasets. The APS household datasets include all the variables on the LFS and APS person datasets, except for the income variables. They also include key family and household-level derived variables. These variables allow for an analysis of the combined economic activity status of the family or household. In addition, they also include more detailed geographical, industry, occupation, health and age variables.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

End User Licence and Secure Access APS data
Users should note that there are two versions of each APS dataset. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Secure Access version. The EUL version includes Government Office Region geography, banded age, 3-digit SOC and industry sector for main, second and last job. The Secure Access version contains more detailed variables relating to:

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is a major survey series, which aims to provide data that can produce reliable estimates at the local authority level. Key topics covered in the survey include education, employment, health and ethnicity. The APS comprises key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), all its associated LFS boosts and the APS boost. The APS aims to provide enhanced annual data for England, covering a target sample of at least 510 economically active persons for each Unitary Authority (UA)/Local Authority District (LAD) and at least 450 in each Greater London Borough. In combination with local LFS boost samples, the survey provides estimates for a range of indicators down to Local Education Authority (LEA) level across the United Kingdom.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. The affected datasets have now been updated. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

APS Well-Being Datasets
From 2012-2015, the ONS published separate APS datasets aimed at providing initial estimates of subjective well-being, based on the Integrated Household Survey. In 2015 these were discontinued. A separate set of well-being variables and a corresponding weighting variable have been added to the April-March APS person datasets from A11M12 onwards. Further information on the transition can be found in the Personal well-being in the UK: 2015 to 2016 article on the ONS website.

APS disability variables
Over time, there have been some updates to disability variables in the APS. An article explaining the quality assurance investigations on these variables that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage.

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (January 2024), a new version of the data file was deposited, with smoking variables added.

The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) is an omnibus survey that collects data on a range of subjects commissioned by both the ONS internally and external clients (limited to other government departments, charities, non-profit organisations and academia).

Data are collected from one individual aged 16 or over, selected from each sampled private household. Personal data include data on the individual, their family, address, household, income and education, plus responses and opinions on a variety of subjects within commissioned modules.

The questionnaire collects timely data for research and policy analysis evaluation on the social impacts of recent topics of national importance, such as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the cost of living, on individuals and households in Great Britain.

From April 2018 to November 2019, the design of the OPN changed from face-to-face to a mixed-mode design (online first with telephone interviewing where necessary). Mixed-mode collection allows respondents to complete the survey more flexibly and provides a more cost-effective service for customers.

In March 2020, the OPN was adapted to become a weekly survey used to collect data on the social impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the lives of people of Great Britain. These data are held in the Secure Access study, SN 8635, ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, 2019-2023: Secure Access. Other Secure Access OPN data cover modules run at various points from 1997-2019, on Census religion (SN 8078), cervical cancer screening (SN 8080), contact after separation (SN 8089), contraception (SN 8095), disability (SNs 8680 and 8096), general lifestyle (SN 8092), illness and activity (SN 8094), and non-resident parental contact (SN 8093).

From August 2021, as coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions were lifting across Great Britain, the OPN moved to fortnightly data collection, sampling around 5,000 households in each survey wave to ensure the survey remains sustainable.

The OPN has since expanded to include questions on other topics of national importance, such as health and the cost of living. For more information about the survey and its methodology, see the ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/methodologies/opinionsandlifestylesurveyqmi">OPN Quality and Methodology Information webpage.

ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, 2019-2023: Secure Access

The aim of the COVID-19 Module within this study was to help understand the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on people, households and communities in Great Britain. It was a weekly survey initiated in March 2020, and since August 2021, as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the survey has moved to fortnightly data collection, sampling around 5,000 households in each survey wave. The study allows the breakdown of impacts by at-risk age, gender and underlying health condition. The samples are randomly selected from those that had previously completed other ONS surveys (e.g., Labour Market Survey, Annual Population Survey). From each household, one adult is randomly selected but with unequal probability: younger people are given a higher selection probability than older people because of under-estimation in the samples available for the survey.

The study also includes data for the Internet Access Module from 2019 onwards. Data from this module for previous years are available as End User Licence studies within GN 33441. Also included are data from the Winter Lifestyle Survey for January and February 2023.

Latest edition information

For the eleventh edition (March 2024), data and documentation for the main OPN survey for waves DN (June 2023) to EB (December 2023) have been added. Data and documentation for the Winter Lifestyle Survey for January-February 2023 have also been added.

Percentage of responses in range 0-6 out of 10 (corresponding to 'low wellbeing') for 'Happy Yesterday' in the First ONS Annual Experimental Subjective Wellbeing survey.

The Office for National Statistics has included the four subjective well-being questions below on the Annual Population Survey (APS), the largest of their household surveys.

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

This dataset presents results from the third of these questions, "Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?" Respondents answer these questions on an 11 point scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’. The well-being questions were asked of adults aged 16 and older.

Well-being estimates for each unitary authority or county are derived using data from those respondents who live in that place. Responses are weighted to the estimated population of adults (aged 16 and older) as at end of September 2011.

The data cabinet also makes available the proportion of people in each county and unitary authority that answer with ‘low wellbeing’ values. For the ‘happy yesterday’ question answers in the range 0-6 are taken to be low wellbeing.

This dataset contains the percentage of responses in the range 0-6. It also contains the standard error, the sample size and lower and upper confidence limits at the 95% level.

The ONS survey covers the whole of the UK, but this dataset only includes results for counties and unitary authorities in England, for consistency with other statistics available at this website.

At this stage the estimates are considered ‘experimental statistics’, published at an early stage to involve users in their development and to allow feedback. Feedback can be provided to the ONS via this email address.

The APS is a continuous household survey administered by the Office for National Statistics. It covers the UK, with the chief aim of providing between-census estimates of key social and labour market variables at a local area level. Apart from employment and unemployment, the topics covered in the survey include housing, ethnicity, religion, health and education. When a household is surveyed all adults (aged 16+) are asked the four subjective well-being questions.

The 12 month Subjective Well-being APS dataset is a sub-set of the general APS as the well-being questions are only asked of persons aged 16 and above, who gave a personal interview and proxy answers are not accepted. This reduces the size of the achieved sample to approximately 120,000 adult respondents in England.

The original data is available from the ONS website.

Detailed information on the APS and the Subjective Wellbeing dataset is available here.

As well as collecting data on well-being, the Office for National Statistics has published widely on the topic of wellbeing. Papers and further information can be found here.

Employment (workplace) by industry from the Business register and employment survey (BRES). This data excludes self-employed but includes proprietors Employment = employees + working proprietors. Working Proprietors are sole traders, sole proprietors, partners and directors. This does not apply to registered charities. Numbers have all been rounded to the nearest 100 Before the BRES first existed in 2009, the ABI collected employment data by industry. The two surveys are not directly comparable. The BRES is a business survey which collects both employment and financial information. Only employment information for the location of an employees workplace is available from Nomis The BRES is based on a sample of approximately 80,000 businesses and is used to provide an estimate of the number of employees. The difference between the estimate and its true value is known as the sampling error. The actual sampling error for any estimate is unknown but we can estimate, from the sample, a typical error, known as the standard error. This provides a means of assessing the precision of the estimate; the lower the standard error, the more confident we can be the estimate is close to the true value. NOMIS website article

This dataset excludes farm based agriculture data contained in SIC class 0100.

Data and charts accompanying the 'Business Register Employment Survey 2010: London' publication

The ABI was replaced by the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) from 2009 onwards, therefore this dataset will no longer be updated.

More on ONS website

https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/workplace-employment-industry-borough

License: UK Open Government Licence

The Annual Population Survey (APS) household datasets are produced annually and are available from 2004 (Special Licence) and 2006 (End User Licence). They allow production of family and household labour market statistics at local areas and for small sub-groups of the population across the UK. The household data comprise key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the APS 'person' datasets. The APS household datasets include all the variables on the LFS and APS person datasets, except for the income variables. They also include key family and household-level derived variables. These variables allow for an analysis of the combined economic activity status of the family or household. In addition, they also include more detailed geographical, industry, occupation, health and age variables.

For further detailed information about methodology, users should consult the Labour Force Survey User Guide, included with the APS documentation. For variable and value labelling and coding frames that are not included either in the data or in the current APS documentation, users are advised to consult the latest versions of the LFS User Guides, which are available from the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance webpages.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022
The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. None of ONS' headline statistics, other than those directly sourced from occupational data, are affected and you can continue to rely on their accuracy. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022

End User Licence and Secure Access APS data
Users should note that there are two versions of each APS dataset. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Secure Access version. The EUL version includes Government Office Region geography, banded age, 3-digit SOC and industry sector for main, second and last job. The Secure Access version contains more detailed variables relating to:

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 4-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address

The Secure Access data have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

The Annual Respondents Database X (ARDx) has been created to allow users of Annual Respondents Database (ARD) (held at the UK Data Archive under SN 6644) to continue analysis even though the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) which was used to create ARD ceased in 2008. ARDx contains harmonised variables from 1997 to 2020.

ARDx is created from two ONS surveys, the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI; 1998-2008, held at the UK Data Archive under SN 6644) and the Annual Business Survey (ABS; 2009 onwards, held at the UK Data Archive under SN 7451). The ABI has an employment survey (ABI1) and a second survey for financial information (ABI2). ABS only collects financial data, and so is supplemented with employment data from the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES; 2009 onwards, held at the UK Data Archive under SN 7463).

ARDx consists of six types of files: 'respondent files' which have reported and derived information from survey questionnaire responses; and 'universe files' which contain limited information on all business that are within scope of the ABI/ABS. These files are provided at both the Reporting Unit and Local Unit levels. There are also 'register panel' and "capital stock" files.

Linking to other business studies
These data contain Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) reference numbers. These are anonymous but unique reference numbers assigned to business organisations. Their inclusion allows researchers to combine different business survey sources together. Researchers may consider applying for other business data to assist their research.

For the fifth edition (December 2023), ARDx Version 4.0 for 1997-2020 has been provided, replacing Version 3. Coverage has thus been expanded to include 1997 and 2015-2020.

Note to users
Due to the limited nature of the documentation available for ARDx, users are advised to consult the documentation for the Annual Business Survey (UK Data Archive SN 7451) for detailed information about the data.

For Secure Lab projects applying for access to this study as well as to SN 6697 Business Structure Database and/or SN 7683 Business Structure Database Longitudinal, only postcode-free versions of the data will be made available.

Average (mean) rating for 'Happy Yesterday' in the First ONS Annual Experimental Subjective Wellbeing survey.

The Office for National Statistics has included the four subjective well-being questions below on the Annual Population Survey (APS), the largest of their household surveys.

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

This dataset presents results from the third of these questions, "Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?". Respondents answer these questions on an 11 point scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’. The well-being questions were asked of adults aged 16 and older.

Well-being estimates for each unitary authority or county are derived using data from those respondents who live in that place. Responses are weighted to the estimated population of adults (aged 16 and older) as at end of September 2011.

This dataset contains the mean responses: the average reported value for respondents resident in each area. It also contains the standard error, the sample size and lower and upper confidence limits at the 95% level.

The data cabinet also makes available the proportion of people in each county and unitary authority that answer with ‘low wellbeing’ values. For the ‘happy yesterday’ question answers in the range 0-6 are taken to be low wellbeing.

The ONS survey covers the whole of the UK, but this dataset only includes results for counties and unitary authorities in England, for consistency with other statistics available at this website.

At this stage the estimates are considered ‘experimental statistics’, published at an early stage to involve users in their development and to allow feedback. Feedback can be provided to the ONS via this email address.

The APS is a continuous household survey administered by the Office for National Statistics. It covers the UK, with the chief aim of providing between-census estimates of key social and labour market variables at a local area level. Apart from employment and unemployment, the topics covered in the survey include housing, ethnicity, religion, health and education. When a household is surveyed all adults (aged 16+) are asked the four subjective well-being questions.

The 12 month Subjective Well-being APS dataset is a sub-set of the general APS as the well-being questions are only asked of persons aged 16 and above, who gave a personal interview and proxy answers are not accepted. This reduces the size of the achieved sample to approximately 120,000 adult respondents in England.

The original data is available from the ONS website.

Detailed information on the APS and the Subjective Wellbeing dataset is available here.

As well as collecting data on well-being, the Office for National Statistics has published widely on the topic of wellbeing. Papers and further information can be found here.

Background
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a unique source of information using international definitions of employment and unemployment and economic inactivity, together with a wide range of related topics such as occupation, training, hours of work and personal characteristics of household members aged 16 years and over. It is used to inform social, economic and employment policy. The LFS was first conducted biennially from 1973-1983. Between 1984 and 1991 the survey was carried out annually and consisted of a quarterly survey conducted throughout the year and a 'boost' survey in the spring quarter (data were then collected seasonally). From 1992 quarterly data were made available, with a quarterly sample size approximately equivalent to that of the previous annual data. The survey then became known as the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS). From December 1994, data gathering for Northern Ireland moved to a full quarterly cycle to match the rest of the country, so the QLFS then covered the whole of the UK (though some additional annual Northern Ireland LFS datasets are also held at the UK Data Archive). Further information on the background to the QLFS may be found in the documentation.

Longitudinal data
The LFS retains each sample household for five consecutive quarters, with a fifth of the sample replaced each quarter. The main survey was designed to produce cross-sectional data, but the data on each individual have now been linked together to provide longitudinal information. The longitudinal data comprise two types of linked datasets, created using the weighting method to adjust for non-response bias. The two-quarter datasets link data from two consecutive waves, while the five-quarter datasets link across a whole year (for example January 2010 to March 2011 inclusive) and contain data from all five waves. A full series of longitudinal data has been produced, going back to winter 1992. Linking together records to create a longitudinal dimension can, for example, provide information on gross flows over time between different labour force categories (employed, unemployed and economically inactive). This will provide detail about people who have moved between the categories. Also, longitudinal information is useful in monitoring the effects of government policies and can be used to follow the subsequent activities and circumstances of people affected by specific policy initiatives, and to compare them with other groups in the population. There are however methodological problems which could distort the data resulting from this longitudinal linking. The ONS continues to research these issues and advises that the presentation of results should be carefully considered, and warnings should be included with outputs where necessary.

New reweighting policy
Following the new reweighting policy ONS has reviewed the latest population estimates made available during 2019 and have decided not to carry out a 2019 LFS and APS reweighting exercise. Therefore, the next reweighting exercise will take place in 2020. These will incorporate the 2019 Sub-National Population Projection data (published in May 2020) and 2019 Mid-Year Estimates (published in June 2020). It is expected that reweighted Labour Market aggregates and microdata will be published towards the end of 2020/early 2021.

LFS Documentation
The documentation available from the Archive to accompany LFS datasets largely consists of the latest version of each user guide volume alongside the appropriate questionnaire for the year concerned. However, volumes are updated periodically by ONS, so users are advised to check the latest documents on the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance pages before commencing analysis. This is especially important for users of older QLFS studies, where information and guidance in the user guide documents may have changed over time.

Additional data derived from the QLFS
The Archive also holds further QLFS series: End User Licence (EUL) quarterly data; Secure Access datasets; household datasets; quarterly, annual and ad hoc module datasets compiled for Eurostat; and some additional annual Northern Ireland datasets.

Variables DISEA and LNGLST
Dataset A08 (Labour market status of disabled people) which ONS suspended due to an apparent discontinuity between April to June 2017 and July to September 2017 is now available. As a result of this apparent discontinuity and the inconclusive investigations at this stage, comparisons should be made with caution between April to June 2017 and subsequent time periods. However users should note that the estimates are not seasonally adjusted, so some of the change between quarters could be due to seasonality. Further recommendations on historical comparisons of the estimates will be given in November 2018 when ONS are due to publish estimates for July to September 2018.

An article explaining the quality assurance investigations that have been conducted so far is available on the ONS Methodology webpage. For any queries about Dataset A08 please email Labour.Market@ons.gov.uk.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022 data files

The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/revisionofmiscodedoccupationaldataintheonslabourforcesurveyuk/january2021toseptember2022" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022.

2022 Weighting

The population totals used for the latest LFS estimates use projected growth rates from Real Time Information (RTI) data for UK, EU and non-EU populations based on 2021 patterns. The total population used for the LFS therefore does not take into account any changes in migration, birth rates, death rates, and so on since June 2021, and hence levels estimates may be under- or over-estimating the true values and should be used with caution. Estimates of rates will, however, be robust.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (February 2025), the data file was resupplied with the 2024 weighting variable included (LGWT24).

The indicators and analysis presented in this bulletin are based on responses from the new voluntary fortnightly business survey, which captures businesses responses on how their turnover, workforce prices, trade and business resilience have been affected in the two week reference period. These data relate to the period 6 April 2020 to 19 April 2020.