lordswrans/lordswrans2025-04-11 conversation_27
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-04-11)

UK Parliament Hansard data: lordswrans/lordswrans2025-04-11 conversation_27

Lord Wigley:To ask His Majesty's Government what are the latest employee activity rates for (1) England and each of the regions of England, (2) Northern Ireland, (3) Scotland, (4) Wales, and (5) the United Kingdom as a whole. \p Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent: The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Question of HL6457 is attached.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Wigley

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

8 April 2025

Dear Lord Wigley,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what are the latest employee activity rates for (1) England and each of the regions of England, (2) Northern Ireland, (3) Scotland, (4) Wales, and (5) the United Kingdom as a whole (HL6457).

An employee activity rate measures the amount of time employees spend engaged in productive billable work, versus non-billable activities. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not collect any information from businesses on their estimated employee activity rates.

We can estimate the proportion of the population aged from 16 to 64 years, that are employed as employees, which may be interpreted as an employee activity rate.

The ONS uses the Annual Population Survey (APS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK, to estimates of the number of employees in the regions and countries of the UK and the proportion of the population aged from 16 to 64 years that this represents.

Table 1 contains APS estimates of the number of employees aged 16 to 64 years and the proportion of the population of that age this represents, for the regions and countries of the UK, for the period October 2023 to September 2024, the latest data currently available. Table 1 should be read in conjunction with the advice on quality contained in the footnotes of this response.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

Table 1: Number of employees aged 16 to 64 years and the proportion of the population of that age that represents, for the regions and countries of the UK, October 2023 to September 2024[1].

Number of employees aged 16 to 64 years (thousands)

Proportion of population aged 16 to 64 years (%)

North East

1,050

64.1

North West

2,962

65.4

Yorkshire and The Humber

2,214

65.1

East Midlands

2,007

67.4

West Midlands

2,402

65.7

East of England

2,555

66.8

London

3,975

64.2

South East

3,894

69.0

South West

2,258

67.0

England

23,316

66.2

Wales

1,242

64.5

Scotland

2,270

65.5

Northern Ireland

760

64.6

United Kingdom

24,558

66.1

Source: Annual Population Survey

[1]The ongoing challenges with response rates, response levels and weighting approach mean that labour market statistics based on both the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the APS are considered ’official statistics in development’ until further review. Because of increased volatility of LFS and APS estimates, estimates of change should be treated with additional caution. The APS estimates have not been weighted to the same populations as the LFS. Therefore, all APS tables will be inconsistent with those used for LFS in the latest periods.