Tag Archives: office of national statistics

Populations up and down – bad news for some local authorities

The census data on population in England and Wales makes for interesting reading. The media have homed in on the changes in age profiles and the impact these will have on various public services, especially the NHS and adult social care.

But my attention was caught by the changes in population at local authority level, because government grants to local authorities are based on population. The specific timing of the census during the pandemic means that the population figures may not accurately represent the situation once it is over.

You can read the ONS report here. It usefully includes this interactive map which shows the changes in each local authority.

 

Posted in News | Also tagged and | Leave a comment

Income inequality at its lowest since 1986 – a good result for the Liberal Democrats in Government?

The Office of National Statistics has released information showing that income inequality is at its lowest rate since 1986.

From the BBC:

The largest fall during this period was a 6.8% drop for the richest fifth of households. They still had an average income, before tax and benefits, of £78,000 in 2011-12.

This was 14 times greater than the poorest fifth of households, who had an average income of £5,400. However, this group has seen their average income rise by 6.9% since the economic downturn.

After all taxes and benefits were taken into account, the top fifth of households had an income of

Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged | 44 Comments

What’s happened to real wages over the last 25 years?

This little presentation from the Office of National Statistics has the answer. It’s packed full of interesting information, presented in a very clear manner:

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 17 Comments

Economic statistic of the week: who has the bulk of savings?

Today’s statistic is courtesy of the Office of National Statistics and their video podcasts (a rather unpublicised source of information given its clarity, relevance and yet low viewership figures).

This graph looks at pension savings for the age group 54 – 64 held by households and sorts households into deciles based on how much savings they have (not, as is often the case with similar graphs, by income or expenditure). As you can see the 10% of households with the most household saving actually have almost half of all household savings:

ONS savings graph

Posted in News | Also tagged | 9 Comments

Youth unemployment: when one in five isn’t one in five

It normally sounds pretty obvious – you work out the unemployment rate by looking at the number of people in work and the number of people seeking work. But sometimes that leads to rather odd figures, as today’s youth unemployment figures demonstrate.

The Guardian’s headline, One in five young people out of work (headline used on Guardian news page; there’s a longer slightly different headline on the story itself), s pretty typical.

But take your way to page 36, Table 14 and look at the raw numbers and it looks rather different.

Number of 16-24 year-olds: 7,337,000.
Number of 16-24 year-olds unemployed: 963,000

In …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 31 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • John Grout
    Thank you to Christine for taking this vital step. It's important that we're loud about our Liberal values on this - and the good policy we just passed at Harr...
  • David Evans
    Hello Mark Frankel, I'm afraid I have to take issue with your comment "Inequality is not a problem. Deprivation is." To me, deprivation is a problem for ...
  • Richard Flowers
    It was illegal for me to be gay as a teenager. That was wrong. The law was changed. It was illegal for me to marry my husband for 20 years. That was wrong. T...
  • Richard Flowers
    First, I must congratulate Chris on her bravery. My trans friends and family are stunned, horrified, and terrified. This is such a difficult week. Thank you...
  • expats
    The atrocities in Gaza will only end when there is not a single Palestinian left there.. The next target will be to removes all Palestinians from the West Bank ...