Sustained employment
Employees who are not in sustained employment are excluded from these statistics.
The definition of sustained employment is consistent with the definition used for 16-19 accountability and in the further education outcome based success measures publication. This looks at employment activity in the six month October to March period. For 2018-19 tax year employees to be counted as in sustained employment:
- An employee must be in paid PAYE employment in five out of the six months between October 2018 and March 2019.
- An employee needs to be in paid PAYE employment for at least one day in a month for that month to be counted.
- If an employee is employed in the five months between October 2018 and February 2019, but not in March 2019, then they must also be employed in April 2019.
Median Earnings
This report presents the median annualised earnings of employees. The median is calculated by ranking all employees' annualised earnings and taking the value at which half of employees fall above and half fall below.
Annualised earnings are calculated for employees that started or left employment part way through the tax year by adjusting their recorded earnings to the equivalent earnings had they been employed for the entire tax year. The PAYE records from HMRC do not include reliable information on the hours worked in employment so it is not possible to distinguish between employees in full time and part time employment. Part time earnings are not adjusted to the full-time equivalent amount.
Median earnings will be lower for groups of employees with high levels of part time employment. This is the case for sectors such as accommodation and food, retail and education, where many employment opportunities are part time.
Standard industrial classification
This publication includes two aggregations of SIC codes: sector and sub-sector. Sector is an adjustment of the ONS 21 industry sections. The adjustment is based on the approach used in Working Futures (opens in a new tab) and allows a direct link to forecasts of employment published there. Sub-sector is a custom grouping of SIC 2 to 5 digit codes designed to add extra layers of detail to some of the broader sectors.
Where an employee worked in multiple industries across the 2018-19 tax year, SIC code associated with the highest earning employment is assigned.
Table 2: SIC code mapping for sector and sub-sector
| Sector | Sub-sector | SIC division | SIC group | SIC code |
| Agriculture | Crop and animal production | 01 | | |
| Fishing and aquaculture | 03 | | |
| Forestry and logging | 02 | | |
| Mining & quarrying | Extraction of petroleum and gas | 06 | | |
| Mining of coal and lignite | 05 | | |
| Mining of metal ores | 07 | | |
| Mining support service activities | 09 | | |
| Other mining and quarrying | 08 | | |
| Food drink & tobacco | Food, beverages and tobacco | 10-12 | | |
| Engineering | Machinery and electrical equipment | 26-28 | | |
| Manufacturing | Chemical products | 19-20 | | |
| Machinery and electrical equipment | 29-33 | | |
| Metal products | 24-25 | | |
| Non-metal products | 22-23 | | |
| Paper and paper products | 17-18 | | |
| Pharmaceutical products | 21 | | |
| Textiles and leather | 13-16 | | |
| Electricity & gas | Air conditioning supply | | 353 | |
| Electricity | | 351 | |
| Gas | | 352 | |
| Water & sewerage | Other waste management | 39 | | |
| Sewerage | 37 | | |
| Waste collection and treatment | 38 | | |
| Water treatment and supply | 36 | | |
| Construction | Building completion and finishing | | 433 | |
| Civil engineering | 42 | | |
| Construction of buildings | 41 | | |
| Demolition and site preparation | | 431 | |
| Electrical, plumbing and installation | | 432 | |
| Other construction activities | | 439 | |
| Whole. & retail trade | Retail, except of motor vehicles | 47 | | |
| Trade and repair of motor vehicles | 45 | | |
| Wholesale, except of motor vehicles | 46 | | |
| Transport & storage | Air transport | 51 | | |
| Land transport | 49 | | |
| Postal and courier activities | 53 | | |
| Warehousing for transportation | 52 | | |
| Water transport | 50 | | |
| Accommodation. & food | Accommodation | 55 | | |
| Event catering | | 562 | |
| Food and beverage services | | 563 | |
| Restaurants, mobile food service | | 561 | |
| Media | Information service activities | 63 | | |
| Programming and broadcasting | 60 | | |
| Publishing activities | 58 | | |
| Video, TV production, sound recording | 59 | | |
| IT | Computer programming and consultancy | 62 | | |
| Telecommunications | 61 | | |
| Finance & insurance | Financial service activities | 64 | | |
| Insurance and pension funding | 65 | | |
| Other services | 66 | | |
| Real estate | Real estate activities | 68 | | |
| Professional services | Accounting, auditing, tax consultancy | | 692 | |
| Advertising and market research | 73 | | |
| Architectural and engineering services | 71 | | |
| Legal activities | | | 69100-69101 |
| Management consultancy | 70 | | |
| Other professional activities | 74 | | |
| Scientific research and development | 72 | | |
| Solicitors | | | 69102 |
| Veterinary activities | 75 | | |
| Support services | Employment placement agencies | 78 | | |
| Office administrative and support | 82 | | |
| Rental and leasing | 77 | | |
| Security and investigation | 80 | | |
| Services to buildings and landscape | 81 | | |
| Travel agency, tour operators | 79 | | |
| Public admin. & defence | Public administration and defence | 84 | | |
| Education | Higher education | | 854 | |
| Other education | | 855 | |
| Pre-primary education | | 851 | |
| Primary education | | 852 | |
| Secondary education | | 853 | |
| Health & social work | Hospital activities | | 861 | |
| Medical and dental practice | | 862 | |
| Other human health activities | | 869 | |
| Residential care activities | 87 | | |
| Social work activities | 88 | | |
| Arts & entertainment | Creative, arts and entertainment | 90 | | |
| Gambling and betting | 92 | | |
| Libraries, archives, museums | 91 | | |
| Sports activities and recreation | 93 | | |
| Other services | Other services | 94-99 | | |
Region
Region is based on the the home address of the employee as recorded in LEO for the 2018-19 tax year. This reflects the address that The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has recorded for each individual on their Customer Information System (CIS). The CIS is primarily updated when an individual notifies DWP or HMRC of a change of address or through the individual interacting with a tax or benefit system.
Highest qualification
Employees will have achieve a range of qualifications across over the course of their education. This analysis identifies the highest qualification achievement of employees at the start of the 2018-19 tax year. This qualification is used to summarise the education pathway of employees. Level of education, subject and qualification title groupings are based on the the highest qualification. The hierarchy used to select between qualifications is below:
- Highest qualification.
- Most recently achieved qualification (if achieving more than one at the same level).
- If the same record appears in the ILR and HESA collections, the HESA record is selected over the ILR record.
The hierarchy used to determine highest qualification is:
- Doctorate
- Other level 8
- Masters degree
- Other level 7
- First degree
- Higher apprenticeship level 6
- Other level 6
- Foundation degree
- Higher apprenticeship level 5
- Other level 5
- Higher apprenticeship level 4
- Other level 4
- Advanced Apprenticeship
- Full Level 3 (including academic qualifications, e.g. A-Levels)
- Other Level 3
- Intermediate Apprenticeship
- Full Level 2 (including academic qualifications, e.g. GCSEs)
- Level 2 English and Maths
- Other Level 2
- Entry or Level 1 English and Maths
- Other Entry or Level 1
- Unassigned
Defining subject area
The subject area of qualifications has been categorised using the sector subject area tier 1 (opens in a new tab) classification system, which is owned by OFQUAL.
Qualifications reported in the HESA data collection do not use the SSA categorisation. HESA subjects are recorded using Joint Academic Coding System (JACs) (opens in a new tab). We have mapped HESA records to SSA tier 1 using the mapping in table 3
Qualifications contained in the ILR and NPD data collections are recorded using the SSA classification system.
The mapping between JACS and SSA is published as an ancillary file to the main statistics release.
Qualification titles
Qualification titles are derived differently depending on the data source.
For post-16 education in schools and colleges, we use the Learning Aim Reference Service (LARS) database to source titles for qualifications. We have applied extra cleaning to group titles together where there are small differences in naming conventions.
For qualifications achieved in higher education institutions, the title is a combination of the type of qualification and the JACs principle subject area description. This means that titles for HE qualifications may not match similar qualifications in the LARS database, and may be different to those used in other publications.
Qualification Pathways
The interactive dashboard provides a summary of common qualification pathways followed by top earning employees of each industry sector and in each region. This analysis is designed to show potential qualification pathways that could lead to employment in an industry sector of interest.
The pathways analysis is based on modelled achievements data for each employee. The following sections explain this process in detail.
Qualification pairs
Qualification pathways are constructed from regulated qualifications achieved by employees in post-16 education at level 2 and above. Basic skills qualifications, unregulated provision and qualifications achieved at school, such as GCSEs, are excluded. We also exclude AS Levels and smaller qualifications that are taken alongside A Levels or larger level 2 and 3 qualifications.
The process involves pairing qualifications from the achievements of each employee. Qualification pairs are created where:
- The employee holds more than one qualification.
- The starting qualification is a lower level than the subsequent qualification.
- The subsequent qualification is achieved after the starting qualification.
Pairs of qualifications must include one of the following criteria for progression between levels of education:
- Level 2 to level 3.
- Level 3 to level 4/5.
- Level 3 to level 6 (where the employee does not have a level 4/5).
- Level 3 to level 7+ (where the employee does not have a level 4/5 or a level 6).
- Level 4/5 to either level 6.
- Level 4/5 to level 7+ (where the employee does not have a level 6).
- Level 6 to level 7+.
Once constructed, these pairs are then aggregated across all employees in each region and sector to show the most common qualification pathways to higher levels of education. This dataset of qualification pairs is published as part of the underlying data included in this release.
Interactive qualification pathways
The interactive dashboard builds on the qualification pairs data to produce pathways showing progression between more than two qualifications, from level 2 or 3 up to level 7+. These pathways are modelled; the data do not show the same cohort of employees moving through the entire pathway.
Each qualification pair is based on the numbers of students who move between them. The analysis then takes the end qualification of a pair as the starting qualification of a new pair. The combining of qualification pairs in this way builds the full collapsible tree chart in the dashboard.
There are too many qualification pairs to visualise in a single chart. The collapsible tree chart shows pathways based on the most common qualifications held by employees in the top third of earners in each sector and region group.
This is achieved by taking qualifications that meet the following criteria, which are applied for each region, sector and starting level selection:
- The first qualification in the pair is in the top ten qualifications by number of employees.
- The first qualification in the pair is in one of the top 5 subject areas by number of employees.
- The first qualification in the pair is held by at least 30 employees.
- At least 3 employees progressed and achieved the second qualification of the pair.
- At least 2% employees who hold the first qualification of the pair progressed to achieve the second qualification.