Monday 16 August 2010

A Fond Farewell To Table 5(2)

For many years, the monthly Labour Market Statistics published by the Office for National Statistics included two sets of figures for taxpayer funded jobs. Up until the June 2010 edition, the statistics included:

- Table 4, which showed 6.090 million public sector and 22.775 million private sector jobs (as at March 2010), which is highly misleading.

- Table 5(2), which showed 8.285 million people working in "Public administration, education, health" and 22.468 million in "everything else" (as at December 2009), which is the figure that I have always quoted (sure, there are private schools and private clinics as well, but I'd be surprised if they employ more than a couple of hundred thousand people).

The statistics for July 2010 and August 2010 only include Table 4, showing the sanitised lower figure, and no longer include Table 5(2).

Just sayin', is all.

6 comments:

Witterings from Witney said...

Something to do with the art of managing information?

Rational Anarchist said...

would it be worth throwing them a FoI request to ask why it was removed, or more specifically on whose orders?

Mark Wadsworth said...

WFW, but why?

The optimistic view is that the Lib-Cons are going to sack all the para-statals (fakecharities etc) who are in the 8 million but not the 6 million - but nobody will ever be able to prove it. The pessimistic view is that they don't intend to sack anybody - but nobody will ever be able to prove it.

RA, good idea. Do you have the faintest idea of how to go about this?

Rational Anarchist said...

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/help/index.html lists a bunch of contact details for them, I think you just email them the question.

Handy tip: If I recall correctly, you don't have to identify yourself - you can make a throwaway free email account with gmail or hotmail and use that to make contact with. If they get awkward and you end up having to chase them for the data, you may need to come forward, mind.

I'm at work currently, but should be finishing at a reasonable hour - will send off a request myself and see what they say.

Anonymous said...

If you want to make a request you are best to read the information commissioners website on the subject: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/access_to_official_information.aspx

regards

Inbreda

FoI said...

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/access_to_official_information.aspx