The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Colin Mowl, dated 15 November 2007:
The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about the proportion of public sector employees in the UK who are a) British-born UK nationals, b) Overseas-born UK nationals, c) nationals of other EU member states and d) nationals of countries outside the EU in each year since 1996. I am replying in her absence. (162052)
The attached table gives the proportion of public sector employees in the categories requested for the three month period ending June each year, from 1997 to 2007. Comparable estimates are not available for 1996, 1998 and 2000.
The data for analysing migrant workers come from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The National Statistics method for estimating the number of migrant workers employed in the UK is routinely based on the number of people at a given time who were born abroad, are of working age (16-64 for men, 16-59 for women), and in employment. However, you have requested data based on foreign nationality and this is the basis on which this question has been answered.
When interpreting the figures in the table, it is important to bear in mind that the LFS is not designed to cover everyone who is present in the UK. The survey may undercount the numbers of people who were born overseas, for the reasons which are set out in the table footnotes. It should also be noted that the categorisation of employment in the public sector is based on individual responses in LFS interviews which often do not correspond to the National Accounts definition of public sector employment.
As reported by ONS in an article, “Characteristics of Pubic Sector Workers”, published in the May 2007 edition of Economic and Labour Market Review , LFS public/private sector classifications suffer from some reporting error and the data do not correspond to the National Accounts definition, which is used for the official public sector employment statistics mainly based on returns from public sector organisations.
As with any sample survey, estimates from the LFS are subject to a margin of uncertainty.
Percentage Three months ending June each year UK-born UK nationals Overseas-born UK nationals EU nationals Non-EU nationals 1997 92 4 2 2 1999 92 4 2 2 2001 92 4 1 3 2002 92 4 2 2 2003 91 4 2 3 2004 91 4 2 3 2005 91 4 2 3 2006 90 5 2 4 2007 90 5 2 4 1 Men aged 16-64 and women aged 16-59. 2 Including country of birth for UK nationals. Notes: Comparable data not available for 1996, 1998 and 2000. It should be noted that the above estimates: -exclude those who have been resident in the UK for less than six months -exclude students in halls of residence who do not have a UK resident parent -exclude people in most types of communal establishment (eg hotels, boarding houses, hostels, mobile home sites etc) Source: ONS Labour Force Survey