ADR UK is funding a number of 18-month Research Fellowships, which support the utilisation of their flagship datasets. One of these datasets is the WED Project’s newly linked Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) linked with PAYE (Pay As You Earn) and Self-Assessment data from His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
Through analysis of this dataset, Dr. Darja Reuschke seeks to explore the prevalence and patterns of multiple employment, associated financial risks, and the influence of local labour market conditions on these employment arrangements. The project’s findings aim to provide critical evidence to shape labour market policies, particularly regarding low-paid and casual work.
The project aims to explore the following research questions:
- To what extent is combining employee jobs and self-employment linked with low-pay, low working hours, and casual or temporary contracts in paid employment?
- How do the risks and spatial patterns of financial constraints from combining a salaried job with self-employment, compare to those of employees with two or more salaried jobs?
- Who is most at risk of taking on additional self-employment due to financial constraints in employee jobs, and are women at greater risk than men?
- What aspects of place are associated with financial constraints among employees with additional income from self-employment, and do these vary for women and men?
The methodology used in this study:
- ASHE captures all jobs registered with HMRC as payrolled income, allowing the identification of employees with multiple jobs. Although ASHE provides high-quality data, it only covers one week and does not include other income sources. This research innovatively links employee records from the survey to their HMRC annual tax return and payslip data. This linkage offers insights into individuals’ annual income from self-employment and total earnings from payrolled jobs for the years 2011 to 2018. Additionally, local data related to an individual’s residence (like unemployment rates) will be incorporated to examine local labour market influences.
- The study will focus on employees who hold multiple jobs, whether combining self-employment with a salaried job or juggling multiple salaried roles. It will analyse the relationship between these job combinations, job constraints (like low earnings or hours, and casual contracts), and local labour market conditions, with attention to how these associations differ by gender.
- The same employers are surveyed each year in ASHE, allowing for the tracking of people who take on additional work as either employees or self-employed individuals over the study period. The analysis will explore transitions to additional self-employment between consecutive years (comparing this to starting multiple paid jobs), considering job characteristics, gender, and local labour market conditions. This will help understanding of whether financial and labour market constraints influence these work arrangements and reveal gender differences in these patterns.