The answers lie with the Labour Force Survey, the huge
continuous survey that ONS uses to measure unemployment (along with employment
and economic inactivity).
The unemployment figures use an internationally-agreed
definition.
To count as unemployed, people have to say they are not working,
are available for work and have either looked for work in the past four weeks
or are waiting to start a new job they have already obtained. Someone who is
out of work but doesn't meet these criteria counts as "economically
inactive".
Each quarter the LFS covers 100,000 people in 40,000 households
chosen randomly by postcode. That's about one in 600 of the total population.
The results are then weighted to give an estimate that reflects
the entire population. Our survey has a very large sample size compared, for
example, with opinion polls, which often sample around 1,000 people
Even so, in any survey there is
always a margin of uncertainty, in this case around plus or minus 3% for the
unemployment level.People sometimes ask why ONS doesn't increase the sample size to
give monthly figures.Put simply, it's a matter of resources. Surveys on this scale
take a great deal of work. The cost of doing it on a monthly basis was
estimated as at least £7 million a year back in the mid-1990s. So a rolling
three-monthly survey remains the best solution for efficiently producing
accurate yet manageable data.Obviously it's possible to look at the number of people
unemployed, for example, in January-March and compare that with the
February-April figure to see what the change is. But it wouldn't be a good
idea: the February and March data are in both sides of the comparison, so
effectively you're looking at January compared with April.Quite apart from the smaller sample involved, the sample frame
wasn't really designed for a monthly survey.Prior to 1998, the LFS results were only published once a
quarter, and the sample frame was designed around this. The country was divided
into 212 interviewer areas, each of which is subdivided into 13 weekly
'stints', each randomly allocated across one of the 13 weeks of the quarter.So while this means that across the entire three months we can
be sure that the sample in each interviewer area is representative of the area
as a whole, we would not necessarily expect it to be so with just one month's
worth of interviews.ONS has in fact been publishing some single-month LFS
employment, unemployment and inactivity estimates on our website since 2004.We did this in response to user requests for more information
about the reasons behind movements in the three-month rolling figures. However,
the monthly series are more volatile than the three-month ones - for the
reasons noted - and so these are not of the quality to be designated National
Statistics.The other measure of joblessness - the claimant count - is
published for each single month. It doesn't suffer from the limitations of
sample size and sampling frame, because it derives from the numbers of
Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) claimants recorded by Jobcentre Plus, so a monthly
figure is possible right down to local level.But because many people who are out of work won't be eligible
for JSA, it's a narrower measure than unemployment, typically about 1.5 million
people recently, compared with about 2.5 million for unemployment.Azure Global’s vision is to be widely recognized as a reputed firm of financial business advisors, achieving real growth for ambitious companies and to become the first choice for F&A outsourcing for accountancy practices and businesses alike for more info visit our site Azure Global and join us also On Facebook
