FAQ

The WED project has been commissioned by ADR UK via its Research Commissioning Board (RCB). This means it has been through a rigorous assessment by a panel of independent academic experts to ensure both that the project methodology uses robust and ethical science, and that the research has genuine potential for public good. In this case, the public good is an enhanced understanding of how the UK labour market functions, which should in turn help inform how career and wage progression can be improved and inequalities addressed.

To access the data, both the researchers and the project must also be approved by the UK Statistics Authority’s Research Accreditation Panel (RAP), which ensures the project is ethical, in the public interest, has scientific merit, and that any privacy considerations have been identified and addressed

Data for the WED project is being linked under the provisions of the 2017 Digital Economy Act, which provides a legal gateway for researchers to access government data in a secure way. Specifically, under Section 64 of the Act – ‘Disclosure of information for research purposes’ – it is stated that deidentified data held by a public authority in connection with the authority’s functions may be disclosed to another person for the purpose of research. This is, however, subject to meeting certain stated criteria, including the assurance that a person’s identity is not specified in any information disclosed for research.

The data provided to researchers for the WED project is de-identified, and processed and stored in line with the ‘Five Safes’ to ensure individuals cannot be reidentified or the data misused. See ADR UK key messaging document for more detail.

Using the 2011 Census will allow us to investigate topics in relation to personal characteristics, such as changes in the ethnicity and gender wage gaps, the impact of disability on earnings, and migrants’ transitions in the labour market.

No. The linking is done by the team at ONS, and researchers do not have access to census responses. Once the records are linked through an anonymous code, the linked data (without personal identifiers) is made available to researchers in a secure facility. See ADR UK key messaging document for more detail.

By linking longitudinal data, the WED team can provide a continuous linked record of earnings data going back 40 years, which will provide a much better understanding of how the issues being studied change over time.

It is important to know not only the job that individuals are doing but the type of firm that they work in. For example, small and big firms act differently, as do the public and private sector. By bringing in business data we will be able to address a number of important policy questions in relation to issues such as changing composition of the workforce, firm dynamics, innovation, and productivity.

By linking in these two data sources, it provides a broader understanding of all income sources, as well as that earned from employment, which will provide a fuller picture of individual and household earnings.

In theory, the ASHE dataset has been linked longitudinally but in practice there are a number of imitations. Our aim is to build a dataset that fully and consistently utilises the information available so that we can study how wages change as workers move within and between firms.

At present there is no robust way to identify migrants within these datasets. By doing so users will be able to get a fuller understanding of the dynamic experience of migrants compared to the rest of the population.

This is not part of the funded project but is an aspiration for the group. We want to link education data for two main reasons. As increasing numbers of people go to university, their impact on the labour market is changing and we want to understand the dynamics of this change. Second, the labour market profile of students is quite different, for example, many individuals aged 18-20 in minimum wage jobs are students, but not all. In order to understand how individuals, move out of low pay jobs we need to separate off students from the total population – the HESA data would allow us to do this.

Again, this is not part of the funded project but is an aspiration for the group. At present, this type of data is not available. If this data can be made available in a suitably protected form, this will allow researchers to build complete models of families’ work history and so fully address topics such as retirement choices, the impact of Universal Credit, and household working decisions.