Presentation of estimates

All estimates are presented by a range of demographic and employment-related variables, including age and sex, region, occupation, industry and workplace size.

• The regions of England together with England as a whole, Wales and Scotland have been adopted as the primary classification for the presentation of regional statistics.
• The size of workplace relates to the number of people at the workplace and is not necessarily the same as the number of people working for the company.
• The Standard Occupational Classification 2020 (SOC 2020) has been used to classify the respondents' occupation since January 2021 (2020/21 onwards). SOC2020 was introduced to replace the classification, SOC2010. However, an issue has been discovered which has led to some respondents in the Labour Force Survey being coded to an incorrect occupation. Therefore results (2001/02-2019/20) are based on the earlier Standard Occupational Classification 2010 (SOC2010). Updated results based on the SOC2020 (2010/11 to 2021/22) will be published in summer 2023, when ONS have revised the SOC2020 codes.
• The Standard Industrial Classification SIC2007 (SIC2007) has been used to classify the respondents' industry of employment since January 2009 (2008/09 onwards). SIC2007 was introduced to replace the classification SIC92/2003. To allow some comparisons with earlier years, SIC92/2003 has been mapped to SIC2007 at section level. A full explanation of the implementation of SIC 2007 and the impacts on the LFS can be found on the ONS website in LFS user guide – Volume 3.

The level at which the data is presented is dependent on the level at which it was collected in the LFS (and also the number of sample cases for any given analysis). Individual characteristics such as age and sex and region are available for all survey subjects. However, employment-related information such as occupation and industry are only available for those who are currently in work or whose most recent job was in the last 8 years.