National Minimum Wage

National Minimum Wage
5 The ASHE 2011 dataset published in November continued to use the old occupation codes
(SOC 2000). ONS is currently recoding ASHE 2011 to SOC 2010. The reworked results will
be published in March 2012. When this has occurred, we will use the re-released data to
assess how the changes to occupational codes affect our definitions of low-paying
occupations. This review will be similar to the re-assessment of the definitions of low-paying
industries we undertook when the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) changed. That
review was reported in Appendix 4 of our 2010 Report. We will present the results of this
occupational review in our 2013 Report.
Average Weekly Earnings
6 AWE is a short-term measure of the level of average weekly earnings per job in Great Britain
which is based on data from the Monthly Wages and Salary Survey. It is available monthly,
showing regular pay, bonus pay and total pay. AWE uses current industry weights that are
updated each month to take account of the distribution of jobs across sectors. ONS also
produces a decomposition of the growth rates to show how much growth is due to wage
growth, and how much is a result of changes in employment across the sectors. Other than
the standard regular revisions as new information and weighting become available, these
data have not changed this year.
Earnings from National Accounts
7 In addition to the main earnings datasets detailed above, we also look at the compensation of
employees series from the National Accounts, and in particular its wages and salaries
component. Compensation of employees includes: wages and salaries; employers’ pension
and National Insurance contributions; bonuses; and benefits-in-kind. Annual estimates for
compensation of employees are based on HMRC pay data, and AWE data are used to
extrapolate quarterly figures.
Labour Force Survey
8 The LFS is the official data source used to measure employment and unemployment. It is a
quarterly survey of around 45,000 UK households conducted on a rolling monthly basis and
provides information on employment, unemployment, earnings, and personal and socioeconomic
characteristics including gender, ethnicity and disability.
9 In our report, analyses of aggregate employment, unemployment and hours worked use
seasonally adjusted monthly and quarterly LFS data published by ONS. For detailed analyses
of the labour market by age, ethnicity, disability and other personal characteristics, we use
the non-seasonally adjusted quarterly LFS Microdata. Our initial outputs from the LFS
Microdata are consistent with the non-seasonally adjusted aggregate data on the ONS
website. We often use the four-quarter moving average of these outputs to take account of
seasonality. Consequently our analyses based on LFS Microdata produce estimates of levels
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