GN:33286 Quarterly Labour Force Survey, December 1992-, Local Area Data LABOUR FORCE SURVEY - regrossing project The Office for National Statistics has recently undertaken a regrossing exercise using the most up-to-date population estimates. Users requiring further information regarding this project should refer to Volume 10 of the documentation, 'Regrossing of LFS data', and the November 1998 and February 2000 editions of Labour Market Trends. The datasets involved are: September - November 1998 December 1998 - February 1999 March - May 1999 June - August 1999 September - November 1999 March - May 2000 June - August 2000 September - November 2000 March - May 2001 June - August 2001 In November 2002 ONS advised that they are currently working toward producing re-weighted Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates based on the findings of the 2001 Census. A fully weighted LFS data set will be available from Summer 2003. In the interim ONS has prepared revised estimates consistent with the 2001 Census, these are published in the First Releases and on the National Statistics website: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=207 Please note that this only affects data from 1984 onwards. ONS has discovered an error in the local authority quarterly LFS estimates in Derbyshire. The error has been in all datasets since spring 1992. A number of LAD's in Derbyshire have been wrongly labelled. The labelling on previous spreadsheets can be corrected as follows: Current label Change to Derbyshire Dales S Derbyshire Erewash Derbyshire Dales High Peak Erewash NE Derbyshire High Peak S Derbyshire NE Derbyshire The data were corrected for the summer 1998 spreadsheet - data subsequent to Summer 1998 are correct During processing, it was noted that summing the individual districts gave different totals to those given at the county, region and national levels. The depositor has stated that this is due to grossing or rounding or both and is not considered to be a problem. We have been asked by the depositor to highlight Section 13 in Volume 1. September 2001 GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS ONS have been reviewing the consistency of geographical data on the LFS, and recommends that the GOVTOR variable is used when regional analyses are carried out. Please also note that a discrepancy between the data and documentation showed that it was not possible to identify the labels for the 94/95 LAD variable and the 95/96 UALAD variable within the QLFS Local Authority Data or the Unitary Authorities/Local Authorities Data. It has, therefore, been necessary to add these labels to the generic volume 6 document for both GN 33286 Quarterly Labour Force Survey : Local Area Data, 1992- and GN 33309 Quarterly Labour Force Survey : Unitary Authorities/Local Authorities. The March 2001 documentation is correct for years 96/97 onwards. May 2002 In the September - November 2001 dataset (SN:4516) a variable was encountered that had no variable name. Its label is "All in employment working in unskilled occupations". It was named (by UKDA) "ALEMPUO". However, it was found that this variable contained no data for any case. July 2004 WITHDRAWAL OF ANNUAL LOCAL AREA DATA Users should note that the Annual Local Area data are no longer available from ESDS. ONS requested on July 14th 2004 that these datasets be withdrawn with immediate effect, and have provided the following information regarding the withdrawal: "ONS and its predecessors have always offered an assurance of confidentiality to potential respondents in its surveys. Databases released for analysis by outside bodies have always been anonymised to ensure that users could not identify any respondent with the information given. However advances in technology and software has made it easier to link survey records to either other survey files or other administrative or commercial databases. Although the risk for most respondents is very small, there remains a risk of identification for people with unusual combinations of personal circumstances.Thus the release outside the central government statistical services of social survey databases with small area identifiers, alongside a national database with detailed coding, has now been ceased." Please note: the Quarterly LAD and TEC data are unaffected by this and will continue to be available.