Claimant count: new economic activity-based rates

A new rate option is available with the claimant count with rates and proportions dataset. The option allows rates to be calculated using the economically active population of an area as measured by the Annual Population Survey (APS).

The denominators (divisors) are calculated using January to December APS survey periods from 2004 onwards and will be updated as new periods are made available or revisions are made to the APS dataset. The new rate is only available for all persons, not for males or females separately. It can be requested for local authorities, parliamentary counstituencies, regions and countries. For Northern Ireland, it is only available at country level as APS economicaly-active counts are not available for smaller geographies.

To access the new rates, either:

• use the wizard/advanced query option and select the dataset claimant count with rates and proportions [link to data], or
• download a spreadsheet (xls) with the latest economically active-based rates for all local authorities.

The introduction of the new rate follows on from an ONS review into the methodology applied to the denominators used to calculate claimant count rates for the UK, countries and regions of the UK.

The results of this review were that the denominators currently used to calculate rates (workforce jobs plus claimant count) would remain as the headline indicator, but an additional denominator based on the number of economically active people should be made available. This would enable users to make better comparisons between claimant count proportions and official unemployment rates (which are based on economically active people).

The workplace-based denominators remains the headline rate for countries and regions, and the 16-64 residence-based denominators remain the headline proportions for all geographies below countries and regions.