New research findings: How many jobs, how much earned?
Categories: Research using linked data, Datasets, Research findings, Data Insights, ADR England, Office for National Statistics, Inequality & social inclusion, World of work
23 January 2025
The Wage and Employment Dynamics team has released a new Data Insight exploring the number of jobs and the earnings that employees receive over the course of a year. It presents findings from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) linked to Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for 2014-2019 in Great Britain.
Previously, if somebody wanted to understand how much people work over the course of the year in the UK, they would rely on work history data collected from household surveys. While valuable, these data sources are limited – for instance, due to small sample sizes or reliance on people’s memory.
For the first time, researchers now have access to HMRC’s PAYE micro-data for the 1% of employees in the UK who are also eligible for the ASHE. This offers new insights into patterns of employment and earnings for individuals across the entire 2014-2019 period – providing new evidence for policymaking.
The findings
To demonstrate the potential of this new dataset, this new Data Insight presents some simple descriptive information on employment and earnings patterns for individuals recorded in the ASHE-PAYE linked data.
It shows that:
- One in ten working-age people are in paid employment for fewer than 31 weeks a year
- Those aged under 31 are more likely to hold more than one job during the year
- Male employees receive 20% more than women in gross hourly earnings
- Hourly earnings rise with employment stability
- People who have multiple jobs and low numbers of working weeks are more reliant on the statutory minimum wage
- Some industry sectors are associated with less stable employee earnings, such as the education sector.
These findings highlight how common earnings and job instability are for a minority of workers; the prevalence of multiple job holding over the course of a year; and the value of the national minimum wage and national living wage in providing a degree of earnings security – particularly for those whose employment patterns are least stable.
To explore them further, and to find out what more can be done with this data, you can read the full Data Insight.
About the dataset
The new ASHE linked to PAYE dataset allows researchers to track all episodes of paid employment for a large sample of individuals, along with all their earnings throughout these episodes. This uses the same administrative data that the government relies on for taxation purposes, providing unique insights into the nature of employment and earnings variability in Great Britain.
This data linkage overcomes limitations of previous household surveys, such as small sample sizes and reliance on retrospective reporting. For the first time, high-frequency longitudinal data on 1% of employees across England, Scotland, and Wales is available for analysis. This offers new opportunities for policymakers to address gaps in employment stability and wage equity.
