Hi Pauline,
Sorry for the delay in response, I was alerted to your e-mail by a good
friend.
As you rightly say the Labour Force Survey (LFS) stats for economic
in/activity are misleading from a critical analytic perspective. This is
mainly because of the confusion around what the term ‘economic activity’
means in the context of the Labour Force Survey. If you are looking for the
numbers of disabled women who are actually in paid work as a measure of
employment/unemployment, then you will know that economic activity figures
do not equate with the figures of disabled people in paid work, and by
implication those out of it.
This is because the definition or variable of economic activity used in the
LFS includes:
a)Those seeking work but not actually in work,
b)Those who are unpaid family workers,
c)Those on government schemes
d)Those available for work, but not actually in work.
The majority are likely to be outside any form of paid work. As such taking
economic activity as the key variable inflates figures, and can give a false
picture of the circumstances of both disabled and non-disabled people
engaged in paid work.
Unfortunately, it’s the economic activity figures that are used in the
printed statistics by the LFS and by Social Trends, which are often mistaken
for the numbers of people in paid work that helps to promote this
misconception to some individuals who should know better- so be careful!
The solution is to use the variable ‘paid work in the reference week’ This
will give you the (much lower) figures of disabled women who are actually
engaged in paid work, (or not as is often the case).
Problem is this means getting hold of the raw LFS data-sets from the Essex
data archive and doing some work with SPSS or a similar package such as
Strata. If you want to follow this route then the definition of disability
to use is the ‘long term work limiting disability’, because this includes
only those of working age, alternatively there are a number of DDA
definitions you could also use. It depends on how many years you’d like your
figures to cover.
Please contact me off-list if you’d like to follow this through….and good
luck with the demystification of the labour figures for disabled women.
Best wishes, Debbie
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2004 7:01 PM
Subject: Employments stats for disabled women
> Does anyone have a source for un/employment stats for disabled women -
which
> actually reflect our lesser economic participation (I know ... but it's
> true!!!!) I do have access to Labour Force Survey stats which as I am
sure everyone
> is aware - are totally misleading - particularly with regard to the
category
> 'economically inactive' - covers a whole range of reasons (justifications)
for
> unemployment.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Pauline Magowan
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