Numbers and characteristics of those considered as potential “key workers” in the response to coronavirus (COVID-19), UK. Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study was undertaken by a team based at Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Warwick Business School and King's College, London. It aimed to investigate employment practices in multinational companies' operations in the United Kingdom, and explored how these are influenced by organisational characteristics. It was the first survey based on a representative sample of multinationals operating in UK.

The sampled population included multinational companies with at least 500 employees in total. For UK-owned firms, eligibility was also based on a minimum of 100 employees in UK, and for overseas-owned firms, at least 100 employees in at least one other country. An initial brief telephone screening survey produced responses from 903 firms. For the main survey, data were collected through 302 structured face-to-face interviews with senior human resources (HR) managers responsible for the UK operations of multinational companies. Fieldwork was carried out by a survey research organisation, GfK NOP. Of the 302 responses, 258 were from operations of foreign-owned multinationals operating in UK, the remaining 44 from UK-owned multinationals.

The survey findings have been used to test propositions concerning the association between a company's employment practices and organisational factors, such as corporate structure, international integration of operations, nationality of ownership, and sector.

Further information about the study may be found on the Warwick Business School Employment Practices of Multinational Companies in Organisational Context project web page and the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Employment Practices of Multinational Companies (MNCs) in Organisational Context: a Large-scale Survey project web page.

The Principal Investigators request that, rather than using the shortened form "Edwards, P. et al.", users list all five authors when citing the study, as follows: "Edwards, P., Edwards, T., Ferner, A., Marginson, P. and Tregaskis, O. Employment Practices of Multinational Companies in Organisational Context, 2005-2006 [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], November 2007. SN: 5748."

Main Topics:

The survey covered the strategy, structure and control mechanisms of companies, and the international structure and role of the human resource management function. It also examined four substantive areas of employment practice: performance management and reward systems; organisational learning; employee involvement and communication; and employee representation.

The survey distinguished practice for three groups among the workforce: managers; the largest occupational group (LOG) among non-managerial employees; and (an innovation in the survey) a key group of employees critical to the firm’s core competence.

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 (October 2024), smoking variables CIGEVER, CIGNOW and CIGSMK16 have been added to the data file.

Unilever is a multi-national consumer goods company that produces food, beverages, cleaning agents and beauty and personal care products. As of 2024, the company employed a total of approximately 125,000 people around the world. The number of Unilever employees has fallen over the past number of years and are significantly lower than in 2003, when the company’s workforce was above 230,000. Unilever Unilever began in 1929 as a merger between a margarine producer and a soap maker. Today, Unilever boasts over 400 brands in the food and refreshments, personal care, and home care markets. Some of the company’s most recognizable brands are Knorr, Dove, Axe, and Lipton. Unilever is one of the leading fast-moving consumer goods companies in the world. Nestlé, Procter & Gamble (P&G), and PepsiCo are other leading companies in this area. Unilever’s key markets A large portion of Unilever’s revenue is generated from personal and household care product sales. Unilever had the second highest sales of any company operating in this sector. P&G, one of Unilver’s biggest rivals, was the only household/personal care company to outsell Unilever that year. The food and beverage industry is Unilever’s other key market. The beverage market is quite segmented and highly competitive, as such Unilever ranks lower on the list of the world's leading beverage companies . The fiscal year end of the company is December, 31st.

In the three months to February 2025, there were approximately 816,000 job vacancies in the UK, compared with 914,000 during the same period a year earlier. The number of job vacancies in the United Kingdom reached a record high of 1.3 million in the three months to May 2022, with the number of vacancies steadily falling since then. During the provided time period, the number of job vacancies fell to its lowest levels in the months leading to June 2020, at just 328,000, at the height of COVID-19 restrictions. Tight labor market beginning to loosen After weathering the economic storm of COVID-19, the UK labor market has been reasonably healthy since 2021. The unemployment rate, which reached 5.1 percent in late 2020, declined in the following months, to a post-pandemic low of 3.5 percent by August 2022. Since that point, however, the unemployment rate has crept up, and was 4.4 percent in November 2024. Resignations have also started to decline, after reaching a peak of 442,000 in the second quarter of 2022, there were just 181,000 in the third quarter of 2024. Which industries are experiencing staff shortages? The percentage of businesses reporting a staff shortage in the UK reached 15.7 percent in September 2022, before falling to just 9.7 percent by October 2023, another indication of a loosening labor market. According to data from that month, approximately 1 in 4 UK businesses in the accommodation and food services had a shortage of staff, the highest of any sector, followed by human health and social work at 18.4 percent, and manufacturing at 17.6 percent. Many of the recent struggles of Britain's National Health Service are directly related to staff shortages, with the public seeing a shortage of doctors and nurses, and overworked staff as some of the main problems facing the NHS.

From April 2025 onwards, the UK's main national minimum wage category, the national living wage, will rise to 12.21 pounds per hour, up from 11.44 pounds per hour in the previous financial year. This amount will apply to workers aged 21 and over, compared with 2022 and 2023 when it was only for workers aged 23 and over, and for those aged 25 and over between 2016 and 2021. The main minimum wage from 2010 to 2015 was the 21+ rate, and 22+ rate between 1999 and 2009. Evolution of the minimum wage Since its introduction in 1999, the minimum wage has had various rate categories, usually based on age. For the first five years, there were two categories, one for workers 18 to 21, and another for workers aged 22 and over. In 2004, a minimum wage for under 18s was introduced, and between 2010 and 2015 there were three rates based on age, and one for apprenticeships. Another age based-rate was added in 2016, but from 2024 onwards, the model will revert to four rate categories overall. In addition to the legal minimum wage, there is also a voluntary real living wage, which for 2024/25 is 12.6 pounds per hour, rising to 13.85 pounds per hour for workers in London. Wages continue to outpace inflation in 2024 Since July 2023, wages have grown faster than inflation in the UK with December 2024 seeing regular weekly earnings grow by 5.9 percent, compared with the CPI inflation rate of 2.5 percent that month. For almost two years between November 2021 and June 2023, wage growth struggled to keep up with inflation, with the biggest gap occurring in October 2022 when inflation peaked at 11.1 percent. The fall in real earnings in one of the most important factors in the UK's ongoing cost of living crisis. At the height of the crisis, around 91 percent of UK households were reporting a monthly increase in their cost of living, with this falling to 46 percent by March 2024.

As of October 2024, the main reason for sickness absences among NHS staff in England was anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric illnesses. During that time, nearly one in four sickness absences was related to such a reason. In addition, the second most common reason for sickness absences in the NHS workforce was colds and flus.