Jessie Evans to Ed Humpherson: Request to remove accreditation

Dear Ed,

I am writing to formally request that the official statistics accreditation be removed from our Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series. If this request is accepted, we intend to publish releases in the series as official statistics in development until further review.

Following the suspension of the accreditation of Office for National Statistics (ONS) labour market statistics based on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS), we have reviewed the accreditation of our APS based Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series.

The Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series is currently classed as accredited official statistics and is used to provide an estimate of the number of filled jobs in the Digital Sector. These employment estimates are produced by restructuring and aggregating APS data relating to Digital Sector SIC codes. Employment data are then presented through various demographic and industrial breakdowns.

ONS has reported concerns with the quality of estimates for smaller segments of the APS population, which the Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series depends upon. Reduced APS coverage of Digital Sector SIC codes reduces the reliability of our employment estimates. Furthermore, the increased volatility of APS estimates due to low sample sizes affects the validity of any observed changes in Digital Sector employment estimates. Our approach in moving the Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series to official statistics in development would be in line with ONS’s decision to consider their APS based labour market statistics as official statistics in development until further review.

In addition to classifying Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment estimates as official statistics in development, we intend to reduce the demographic and industrial breakdowns we publish to reduce low sample values.

We will continue to ensure we are transparent with users on how reliable our estimates are. We will continue to provide appropriate advice and caveats in our publications for users of our data and will apply suppression where appropriate.

Yours sincerely,

Jessie Evans

Chief Statistician, DSIT