Economy ONS has today published several releases looking at different aspects of productivity.
Among these is a detailed break-down of productivity by detailed industrial division. These new estimates suggest that changes in the aggregate mix of activity in the UK economy – as well as lower productivity growth in telecommunications, manufacturing and finance industries – account for a large proportion of the UK's recent productivity slow-down. Another article sets out new experimental estimates of regional labour productivity. These suggest wide differences across the UK: all four sub-regions of London are among the top five areas by labour productivity, while predominantly rural areas in England and Wales had among the lowest levels of labour productivity in 2016. Commenting on today's productivity analysis, senior ONS economist Richard Heys said:
"It is becoming increasingly clear that a shift from people working in highly productive industries, such as mining, to less productive industries, such as food and beverage services, is contributing to the UK's overall weak productivity performance.
"London's productivity continues to perform strongly, but sparse rural areas in England and Wales performed relatively weakly." Employment and labour market The rapid growth of self-employment has been a pronounced feature of the UK labour market in recent years. The number of self-employed increased from 3.3 million people (12.0% of the labour force) in 2001 to 4.8 million (15.1% of the labour force) in 2017. Recent studies of this phenomenon have examined the characteristics of the self-employed (for example, Amankwah and Wales (2016), Tomlinson and Corlett (2017)) but have largely sidestepped the income of the self-employed. One reason for the limited coverage of self-employed income is the difficulty involved in measuring it. As noted in recent discussion, existing data on self-employment incomes are largely based on survey responses. These surveys are likely to be more accurate for individuals with steady incomes, reflecting relatively stable working patterns. For the self-employed – a large fraction of whom may have irregular hours, or who may work on a project-by-project basis – the nature of their work may make it difficult to accurately report incomes for a particular period. This article takes some steps to address this gap in existing analysis. The first part of this article uses the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the Department for Work and Pensions' Family Resources Survey (FRS) to analyse the characteristics and income of the self-employed. The second part of this article examines the wealth of the self-employed through the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), which provides information on the financial, housing and pension wealth of the self-employed. Bringing together these different sources builds a more detailed picture of the self-employed, their characteristics and financial position. Help us design the questions for the 2021 Census | 
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