Data Insight: How many jobs, how much earned?

This Data Insight by the Wage and Employment Dynamics team explores the number of jobs and the earnings that employees receive over the course of a year. It presents information 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.

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Summary

The new ASHE linked to PAYE dataset – covering England, Scotland, and Wales – allows us to track all episodes of paid employment for a large sample of individuals, along with the earnings they receive throughout the entire duration of those 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.

The new dataset holds substantial potential for researchers and policymakers, allowing evidence gaps to be filled and supporting more robust policy evaluation. In this Data Insight, we explore the prevalence of earnings and job instability for employees over the course of their working years. Our findings demonstrate that a substantial minority of workers not only hold several jobs in a year but also experience many weeks without a job, especially among those on relatively low rates of pay.

What we found

• 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 percent 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

• Comparing annual earnings and hourly pay in education suggests unstable employment in this sector

Why it matters

We have only presented descriptive information on employment and earnings patterns from the new ASHE-HMRC Real Time Information data, and further data improvements are expected. However, these first findings provide some insight into what can be learned from tax-based information on employment spells and earnings, when combined with information on the demographic and job-related characteristics contained in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE).

There are no other data sources that can provide such precise and detailed information on employment patterns over the course of a year, both within and across employers, as well as on the gross earnings over the course of a year from all employee jobs.

We have briefly illustrated the power of such data, focusing on those with at least one job over the course of a year. Our 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.