Labour market statistics July 2008, England not included?

Dear Mr Trice,

Thank you for your email.

Please accept my apologies for our delay in responding to you had though
that you had already been sent the response below, but it appears to have
been stuck in my draft emails for the past couple of weeks.

Yours Sincerely,

Nicola Shearman
Dear Mr Trice,
Labour market statistics July 2008, England not included

The ONS currently produces Regional Labour Market First Releases for the 9
Government Office Regions in England, for Scotland and for Wales. Releases
are produced at this level to meet the needs of government departments and
regional development agencies, who require labour market statistics for
these geographies to formulate and assess policies. As well as producing
statistics at this level to meet these cross government needs, the figures
are additionally released in the form of the Regional First Releases. This
geographic level is also the primary level of the Nomenclature of
Territorial Units for Statistics (la nomenclature des unites territoriales
statistiques - NUTS) used for international comparison, for a wide range of
statistical measures.

Currently there is no government requirement or policy driver to produce a
Labour Market First Release with a combined coverage for the whole of
England. Since there is no requirement from the business of government for
this release, the production of the output would not provide value for
money for government and the UK taxpayer.

Although an England release is not produced, it is still possible for
interested users to compile nearly all of the labour market information on
England from currently published sources, as such the information is exempt
from release under S21 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). S21 of the
FOIA exempts any information which is available elsewhere, even if a cost
is incurred.

The tables supporting the 9 Government Office Region releases are published
each month in Excel format. These are available from the National
Statistics website at
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Pr.... Any
statistics relating to levels can be compiled for England by summing the
figures from these regions.

In some cases rates are derived from two or more of these levels, in these
cases guidance on how these rates are derived are given in the footnotes
accompanying the tables. The one exception to this is the claimant count
rates, where the denominators are not published within the release.
Claimant count rates for England, as well as a wide variety of other
geographies, can be accessed via the Nomis website at
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/.

The only figures that cannot be wholly derived from these sources are the
weekly hours of work (table 7) and the usual weekly hours of work (table
8). The figures within these tables are not routinely produced for the
whole of England, since there is no government need for this breakdown.
However, users can request specific analyses from the LFS Dataservice (Tel
01633 655732). This service does incur a charge to cover the cost of
producing individually tailored outputs. Again this information is exempt
from release under S21.

If you require any further assistance in compiling figures for England from
the current releases, you can contact the Labour Market Helpline (Tel 01633
456901), who will be able to guide you through the process and provide
advice on the calculation of rates.

If you require any further assistance in accessing information on the Nomis
website, you can contact the Nomis Helpdesk (Tel 0191 334 2680).

I hope this reply helps you in understanding why ONS compiles these
statistics in their current format and helps you to derive any labour
market figures for England that you require.

Yours sincerely.

Nicola Shearman
FOI Manager, ONS.

request-1205-fb2952e4@whatdot
heyknow.com To: FOI Team@ONS
cc:
19/08/2008 08:28 Subject: Freedom of Information request - Labour market statistics July 2008, England
not included?

Dear Sir or Madam,

I request you comply with the FOI act, an answer or response was
due on 15 Aug 08!

Yours sincerely,

James Trice

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