Abstract

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a study of the employment circumstances of the UK population. It is the largest household study in the UK and provides the official measures of employment and unemployment.The first Labour Force Survey (LFS) in the United Kingdom was conducted in 1973, under the terms of a Regulation derived from the Treaty of Rome. The provision of information for the Statistical Office of the European Communities (SOEC) continued to be one of the reasons for carrying out the survey on an annual basis. SOEC co-ordinated information from labour force surveys in the member states in order to assist the EC in such matters as the allocation of the Social Fund. The survey was carried out biennially from 1973 to 1983 and was increasingly used by UK government departments to obtain information which would assist in the framing of social and economic policy. By 1983 it was being used by the Employment Department (now the Department for Work and Pensions) to obtain information which was not available from other sources or was only available for Census years. From 1984 the survey was carried out annually, and since that time the LFS has consisted of two elements:

• a quarterly survey conducted in Great Britain throughout the year, in which each sampled address was called on five times at quarterly intervals, and which yielded about 15,000 responding households in every quarter;
• a 'boost' survey in the spring quarter (March-May), which produced interviews at over 44,000 households in Great Britain and over 4,000 households in Northern Ireland.

Users should note that only the data from the spring quarter and the 'boost' survey were included in the annual datasets for public release, and that only data from 1975-1991 are available from the UK Data Archive. The depositor recommends only considered use of data for 1975 and 1977 (SNs 1757 and 1758), as the concepts behind the definitions of economic activity changed and are not comparable with later years. Also the survey methodology was being developed at the time and so the estimates may not be reliable enough to use.

During 1991 the survey was developed, so that from spring 1992 the data were made available quarterly, with a quarterly sample size approximately equivalent to that of the previous annual data. The Quarterly Labour Force Survey series therefore superseded the annual LFS series, and is held at the Data Archive under GN 33246.

The study is being conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the government's largest producer of statistics. They compile independent information about the UK's society and economy which provides evidence for policy and decision making, and for directing resources to where they are needed most. The ten-yearly census, measures of inflation, the National Accounts, and population and migration statistics are some of our highest-profile outputs.

Geographic coverage

The whole country.

Analysis unit

• Individuals
• Families/households

Universe

• Households
• All persons normally resident in private households in the United Kingdom

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Stratified multi-stage sample; for further details see annual reports. Until 1983 two sampling frames were used; in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the Valuation Roll provided the basis for a sample which, in England and Wales, included all 69 metropolitan districts, and a two-stage selection from among the remaining non-metropolitan districts. In Northern Ireland wards were the primary sampling units. In Scotland, the Address File (i.e. post codes) was used as the basis for a stratified sample.From 1983 the Postoffice Address File has been used instead of the Valuation Roll in England and Wales. In 1984 sample rotation was introduced along with a panel element, the quarterly survey, which uses a two-stage clustered sample design.

The sample comprises about 90,000 addresses drawn at random from the rating lists in 190 different areas of England and Wales With such a large sample, it Wiil happen by chance that a small number of addresses which were selected at random for the 1979 survey Will come up again In addltlon 2,000 addresses in 8 of the areas selected in 1979 have been deliberately re-selected aga~n this time (me Interviewers who get these addresses In the~r work w,ll receive a special letter to take with them.)

Sampling deviation

One of the limitations of the LFS is that the sample design provides no guarantee of adequate coverage of any industry, as the survey is not industrially stratified. The LFS coverage also omits communal establishments, except NHS housing, students in halls of residence and at boarding schools. Members of the armed forces are only included if they live in private accommodation. Also, workers under 16 are not covered.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

All questions in the specification are laid out using the same format. Some questions (for instance USUWRKM) have a main group routed to them, but subsets of this group are asked variations of the question. In such cases the main routing is at the foot of the question as usual, and the subsets are listed separately above it, with the individual aspect of the routing indented slightly from the left of the page.

Response rate

Method of calculating response rates The response rate indicates how many interviews were achieved as a proportion of those eligible for the survey. The formula used is as follows: RR = (FR + PR)/(FR + PR + OR + CR + RHQ + NC + RRI*) where RR = response rate, FR = full response, PR = partial response, OR = outright refusal, CR = circumstantial refusal, RHQ = refusal to HQ, NC = non contact, RRI = refusal to re-interview, *applies to waves two to five only.

Sampling error estimates

As with any sample survey, the results of the Labour Force Survey are subject to sampling errors. In addition, the results of any sample survey are affected by non-sampling errors, i.e. the whole variety of errors other then those due to sampling.