§ Mr. AlexanderTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate how many(a) men and (b) women working (i) part-time and (ii) full-time in Paisley, South earn less than (1) £3 per hour and (2) £3.60 per hour; and in each case if he will give the percentage of the total number employed. [48489]
§ Mrs. LiddellThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Douglas Alexander, dated 3 July 1998:
As the Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent question on earnings in Paisley South.The New Earnings Survey (NES) can provide earnings data for small geographical areas. However, the release of NES data is restricted to figures which are derived from a sufficiently large sample of employees, and which have an acceptable level of accuracy. Estimates of the number of men and women in Paisley South who earn less than the levels quoted cannot be provided, because the small sample size produces unreliable statistics. I have therefore provided data for Renfrewshire in the attached table. These are based on the 1997 NES, the latest for which data are available.The NES is based on a one percent sample of employees in the PAYE system and is therefore likely to under-represent relatively low paid staff earning below the tax threshold and in particular those who work part-time.The extent of this bias may be estimated for Scotland by using data from the NES augmented by data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). This suggests that the estimate of the overall proportion of employees aged over 21 years earning below £3.60 could understate the true position by as much as 4 percentage points. However, it is unlikely that the occurrence of lower paid jobs is uniform across the region, and so it would be wise to treat this figure as broadly indicative rather than a precise estimate.326W
Adjusted New Earnings Survey—Renfrewshire—April 1997 Percentage of employees with hourly earnings excluding overtime and shift payments less than: Employees2 <£3.00 <£3.60 Renfrewshire Employees of all ages on adult rates Full-time males 1.4 4.2 Part-time males 1— 1— All males 1.3 4.7 Full-time females 3.3 8.9 Part-time females 1— 1— All females 5.7 14.6 All full-time employees 2.1 5.9 All part-time employees 1— 1— All employees 3.4 9.4
Adjusted New Earnings Survey—Renfrewshire—April 1997 Percentage of employees with hourly earnings excluding overtime and shift payments less than: Employees2 <£3.00 <£3.60 Employees aged 18 to 21 on all rates of pay Full-time males 1— — Part-time males 1— — All males 1— — Full-time females 1— — Part-time females 1— — All females 1— — All full-time employees 1— — All part-time employees 1— — All employees 1— — Employees aged 18 to 21 on adult rate of pay Full-time males 4.2 — Part-time males 1— — All males 4.5 — Full-time females 7.5 — Part-time females 1— — All females 13.3 — All full-time employees 5.4 — All part-time employees 1— — All employees 8.7 — 1Denotes sample number too low or standard error rate too high for reliable estimate 2Employees whose pay for the survey pay-period was unaffected by absence