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Employment Level: Private Sector

Answer

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.Letter from Dennis Roberts, dated February 2009"The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking how many British citizens were employed by the private sector in (a) 1997 and (b) the most recent year for which figures are available (258597). I am replying in her absence.""The available information for UK nationals aged 16 and over is provided in the attached table.""The estimates are derived from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). These estimates are based on the respondents' views about the organisation for which they work. Citizenship is defined as the nationality reported by the respondents at the time of the survey.""As with any sample survey, estimates from the LFS are subject to a margin of uncertainty.""The figures have been derived from the LFS microdata which are weighted using the official population estimates published in autumn 2007. Consequently the 2008 estimate is not entirely consistent with the figures published in the monthly Labour Market Statistics First Release, which are weighted using more up-to-date population estimates."

UK nationals aged 16 and over employed in the private sector¹², three month period ending December, 1997 and 2008, United Kingdom, not seasonally adjusted
	Thousands/Persons
1997	19,724
2008³	*20,212
¹It should be noted that private sector estimates are based on survey respondents' views about the organisation for which they work
²Includes self-employed and unpaid family workers
³Coefficients of variation have been calculated for the latest period as an indication of the quality of the estimates, as described below:
Guide to Quality:
The Coefficient of Variation (CV) indicates the quality of an estimate, the smaller the CV value the higher the quality. The true value is likely to lie within +/- twice the CV - for example, for an estimate of 200 with a CV of 5 per cent. we would expect the population total to be within the range 180-220.
Key Coefficient of Variation (CV) (%) Statistical robustness
* 0 = CV <5 Estimates are considered precise.
** 5 = CV <10 Estimates are considered reasonably precise.
*** 10 = CV < 20 Estimates are considered acceptable.
**** CV = 20 Estimates are considered too unreliable for practical purposes.
It should be noted that the above estimates exclude people in most types of communal establishment (e.g. hotels, boarding houses, hostels mobile home sites etc)
Source:
Labour Force Survey

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

488 c1353-4W; 258597

Session

2008-09

Related items

Foreign Workers
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Written questions
House of Commons

Subjects

Private sector Staff

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk