The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Colin Mowl, dated 27 February 2008:
The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking how many families in Stockton South constituency were in receipt of no more than the national minimum wage in the last period for which figures are available. I am replying in her absence. (189327)
The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is the principal source of statistics on employees’ earnings. The information requested is not available from the ASHE because the survey does not collect details of employees’ family circumstances. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) collects information about each individual of participating households and can therefore be used to estimate how many people are in employment. However, the LFS cannot be used to estimate the average earnings for families. This is because the statistics for family units are produced from the LFS household datasets, which do not contain information on earnings within each family unit.