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The Vacancy Survey: a new series of National Statistics
Results of ONS's new monthly business survey measuring total job vacancies, previously published experimentally are now adopted as National Statistics.
Author: Andrew Machin
Labour Market Trends, vol 111, no 7, pp 349 - 362. ISSN: 1361-4819
In April 2001 ONS started a new monthly survey of businesses to measure the total stock of job vacancies across the economy. The survey asks employers how many vacancies they have in total for which they are actively seeking recruits from outside their organisation (for example, by advertising or interviewing.
Returns from nearly 6,000 businesses each month, on the total number of vacancies, are submitted by telephone keypad to ONS, mainly via head offices. In addition to total estimates on a monthly basis, analysis of vacancies is produced by industry and by size of enterprise on a rolling quarterly basis.
Since September 2002, the results have been published on an experimental basis on the National Statistics Online. The data produced by the vacancy survey have been of sufficient quality and found to be suited to the uses made of the series, that the National Statistician has judged that the results of the survey can now be fully established as National Statistics.
This article gives the background to the survey, reviews the survey results and their quality, including comparisons with other surveys.
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