People, population and community It is very difficult to estimate how many seasonal workers of which nationality are working in the agricultural sector in the UK, although the data sources in this article give useful indications.
By their nature, seasonal migrants are difficult to estimate. They arrive and leave, and they move jobs. Point-in-time estimates will miss some workers as they may have already left, or be yet to arrive. Estimates that take a longer approach will confuse positions with people.
The Annual Population Survey (APS) can be used indicatively as a minimum size of the number of all workers in the agriculture industry, which for the year to June 2016 was 346,000. It is not possible to estimate seasonal, casual and gang workers from the APS.
The British Growers Association (BGA) survey is the best estimate of "positions filled" by all non-UK seasonal workers in the horticulture sector, for 2016 this was 75,000. However, the BGA survey only enquires about non-UK employees.
The best estimate of the number of seasonal workers (the number of people who fill the positions) that is currently available comes from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' (DEFRA's) June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture. For June 2016, the estimate of seasonal, casual and gang workers was 64,200. This data source estimates seasonal, casual and gang workers but it doesn't provide this estimate by nationality.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) Seasonal Supply of Labour survey, which only looks at seasonal agricultural workers recruited by labour providers, estimates that 99% of seasonal labour is provided by EU workers.
One fundamental question for policy-making is whether seasonal agricultural workers "fly in – fly out" for seasonal jobs, or are longer-term residents of the UK and move within the UK wherever the jobs are. This is not possible to answer from current data sources.
These data sources have different coverage of seasonal workers, different definitions of nationality, and are not all based on the same time period. These differences are detailed in the Quality and methodology section. Economic Forums ONS is hosting Economic Forums in Chichester, West Sussex and Belfast in March. These forums will give you an opportunity to hear about the current state of the UK economy, including data and analysis for your region. We will also cover developments taking place with transformation of economics statistics on a national and local level. Chichester, West Sussex - 2 March Riddel Hall, Belfast - 7 March If you have any questions please email: ons.economic.forum@ons.gov.uk | 
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment