Economic activity
Economically active persons are those over the minimum school-leaving age who were working or unemployed in the week before the week of interview. These persons constitute the labour force.
Working persons
This category includes persons aged 16 and over who, in the week before the week of interview, worked for wages, salary or other form of cash payment such as commission or tips, for any number of hours. It covers persons absent from work in the reference week because of holiday, sickness, strike, or temporary lay-off, provided they had a job to return to with the same employer. It also includes persons attending an educational establishment during the specified week if they were paid by their employer while attending it, people on Government training schemes and unpaid family workers.
Persons are excluded if they worked in a voluntary capacity for expenses only, or only for payment in kind, unless they worked for a business, firm or professional practice owned by a relative.
Full-time students are classified as ‘working’, ‘unemployed’ or ‘inactive’ according to their own reports of what they were doing during the reference week.
Unemployed persons
The GHS uses the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition of unemployment. This classifies anyone as unemployed if he or she was out of work and had looked for work in the four weeks before interview, or would have but for temporary sickness or injury, and was available to start work in the two weeks after interview. Otherwise, anyone out of work is classified as economically inactive.
The treatment of all catgories on the GHS is in line with that used on the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
Ethnic group
Household members are classified as White, Black Caribbean, Black African, Black other, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla-deshi, Chinese, or ‘none of these groups’ by the person answering the Household Schedule.
- The ‘Black Caribbean’ category includes the ‘Black Caribbean’ and ‘Guyanese’ groups. In some tables of the report the category ‘Black’ is used, which includes ‘Black African’ as well as ‘Black Caribbean’ and ‘Guyanese’.