Revisions to workforce jobs: December 2007

Describes the changes made to Annual Business Inquiry methods in the transition to a new survey, and the associated discontinuities

This article was first published on the National Statistics website on 12 December 2007, to coincide with the Labour Market Statistics First Release and the planned revisions made to the workforce jobs (WFJ) series. The revisions are mainly due to benchmarking the short-term employee jobs series to the latest estimates from the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI/1). The article describes the changes the Office for National Statistics has made to ABI/1 methods in the transition to the new Business Register and Employment Survey, and the discontinuities these changes have caused between December 2005 and September 2006. Estimates of change across this period are now unreliable, but the new methods have improved the levels and changes moving forward. Revisions to other sources that feed into WFJ are also explained.