Welcome to the Pornocracy (Part One): the UK Economic Miracle | 27 comments (27 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (4.00 / 4)

ONS quarterly figures on self-employed persons as a percentage of the population:

Noodling along for years. 6.7% last year, until Q4 when there was a jump. And in Q1 this year, a leap.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 10:54:11 AM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

Oh I'm going to have to throw that to a couple of people

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 01:28:21 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

Bingo. That's it in a single graph.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 02:05:26 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

There's an error in the latest quarter's 'Total' figures, where the %age of employed should read 39.9% instead of the 49.9% which I'm seeing.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 02:16:45 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

It depends on the total population (see footnote 1), which isn't given in the spreadsheet. But unless they've seriously redefined the total population, that figure is odd.

Still, the absolute number of self-employed has gone from 4.166m in 2013 Q1 to 4.554m in 2014 Q1. That's almost 400,000 more in one year, as against a much slighter annual variation in past years.

In fact, that's half of the job creation they claim over the past year.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 03:20:47 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

what is the total population though? if you look at the rates and totals there, the total population works out at just over 51 million, so is it over 18's? working age population? or what?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:19:35 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

can't be working age population these are the 2010 figures

All ages 62,262
Mean age (years) 40.0
Under 16 11,608
Working age* 38,426
Under 40 19,828
40 & over 18,598
Pensionable age* 12,228

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:41:04 PM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

The age groups considered are the over-16s (no upper limit).

In your breakdown (second comment), if you take the under-16s out from total pop, you get 51 million.

But the real humdinger is that roughly 800K "new jobs" have been created from 2013 Q1 to 2014 Q1, and half of those are self-employment. There would seem to have been a very sharp rise in self-employment, concentrated on 2013 Q4 and 2014 Q1. This is prima facie evidence for the thesis that jobseekers are being encouraged, in significant numbers, to become self-employed.

Next stop, is there a concomitant rise in working tax credit payouts? I don't know if any figures are available for that.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 01:48:30 AM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

well there's this

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-and-working-tax-credits-statistics-finalised-annual -awards-2012-to-2013

but the rise won't be available in there till the end of next May, (15 days after the Election) as it appears only to be published once a year and the last one was end of May this year

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 07:21:47 AM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

I'd looked at that. But it breaks everything down by family. You can feel the political pressure to produce "useful" ie feedable to the media government-friendly data. I didn't find a total working tax credit paid out p.a., nor a breakdown employees/self-employed. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough (there's the final page).

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 08:00:34 AM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

In fact I looked at the most recent one.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 08:02:41 AM EST
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Re: Just when you thought things were looking up.. (none / 0)

46,000 are maybe not in the tax credits figures. they are on a seperate "run your own business scheme

Esther McVey: 46k businesses set up through New Enterprise Allowance so far - around 2k per month over last year
— DWP Press Office (@dwppressoffice) June 23, 2014