§ Mr. HoyleTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what assessment he has made of the average earnings of(a) women and (b) men in (i) Lancashire and (ii) the North West. [172070]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Lindsay Hoyle, dated 10 May 2004:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the average earnings of (a) women and (b) men in (i) Lancashire and (ii) the North West. (172070)
Average earnings are estimated from the 2003 New Earnings Survey (NES) and are provided for full-time employees on adult rates of pay whose pay was unaffected by absence during the pay period, by their place of work. This is the standard definition used for MRS tables. The NES does not collect data on the self employed and people who do unpaid work.
The 2003 NES estimates that the total average weekly earnings of full-time adult employees in Land in table A22.1 for males and A23.1 for females, and arc available on the National Statistics wcbsite at: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/clownloads/theme_labour/NES2003_Analyses_By_Region/NES2003_Analyses_By_Region.pdf
The NES, carried out in April of each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in Great Britain. It is a 1 per cent. sample of all employees who are members of pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) schemes, but because of its sampling frame, it has difficulty capturing data on people with very low pay. It is therefore likely to under-represent relatively low paid staff earning below the tax threshold.
The New Earnings Survey publication criteria ensures that all estimates are undisclosive and of reliable quality. A number of estimates have been removed from the published tables for these reasons.