A Dataset of Workforce Job Counts for British Local Authority Districts, 1981-2018

Abstract

This paper presents workforce job counts for British local authority districts between the years 1981 and 2018. The estimates are produced by adjusting local authority job counts drawn from the Census of Employment, Annual Employment Survey, Annual Business Inquiry, and Business Register and Employment Survey to match regional job counts drawn from the Workforce Jobs dataset. The result is a measure of sub-regional workforce jobs which is consistent with publicly available national statistics, and can be motivated as a maximum entropy estimator. To illustrate the use of the dataset, the employment effects of European Union Objective 1 funding are examined using a synthetic control method.