Census 2011 - Slightly Off the Mark?

Meet Martina: Since her position at the bank was made redundant last year, she has juggled a number of roles: working and studying part time on a FÁS employment programme; caring for her disabled parents and her children; and spending her spare time on plans to start her own business. On Sunday, 10th April, Martina sat down to fill out the Census form. When she reached questions 27to 34 – the section dealing with status, employment and education – confusion set in.

The CSO tells us that filling in the Census form will help provide data that will assist the Irish government and others to plan for the future, providing an extensive picture of our individual social and living conditions that will map out future policy, planning and decision-making in areas such as health care, education and employment. The resultant analysis will capture a snapshot of Irish society, but how clear, complete and comprehensive will the picture actually be?

On a deeper reading of the Census form, it appears that some questions are framed from a traditional, one-dimensional view of our country and do not reflect the current reality for many thousands of Irish citizens like Martina.

The employment questions highlight the potential for error by making it difficult for Martina to classify her status. Question 27 (how would you describe your present principal status) is the basis of all economic analysis emanating from the census. It groups persons aged 15 years and over, within and outside the labour force, according to their primary economic status. There is, however, no specific designation for participants on state-sponsored programmes. How should Martina and the other 57,762 FÁS trainees, 14,944 apprentices, and the 25,906 people engaged on employment programmes categorise themselves? Do they tick the ‘working for payment or profit’ box, the ‘unemployed’ box, the ‘student or pupil’ box, the ‘other’ box, or all of the above? This lack of clarity may potentially generate insufficient and inappropriate labour market policy responses by trying to categorise the entire adult population into simplified groupings.

An interesting discussion arises when question 29 (do/did you work as an employee or are/were you self-employed in your main job?) is probed. This question is used to assign social class to all at work, now or formerly. If it is such a key economic variable, what is the rationale for excluding students, carers and those unable to work due to permanent sickness/disability altogether? These groups are referred to in question 27, but there is no mention of them in question 29. Where did they go? When it now comes to allocating social class, those formerly part of the labour force are simply omitted. How then do we ascertain their socio-economic status?

This omission is compounded in question 28 which asks those working, the unemployed and retirees to self-declare their present/previous main job, but asks students, carers and those unable to work due to permanent sickness/disability to skip the question on prior occupational status. The 14 per cent of our students in higher education that are mature students, the estimated eight per cent of adults providing non-paid care (one-third of whom work full-time according to the CSO) and the almost 100,000 individuals claiming Disability Allowance may be left wondering how they will be represented in the statistics.

Furthermore, one of the aims of the census is to provide a detailed picture of the occupations of the entire population, assisting analysts and the government to understand the economic infrastructure of Ireland. Yet none of the questions take account of non-traditional employment arrangements. Respondents are unable to highlight the fact that, like Martina, they may occupy more than one role, always having to opt for their ‘principal’ position, defined by the job in which they usually work/worked the most hours (questions 27 to 34). The Census form excludes those who wish to be represented as combining paid and self employment; students who may also work in paid or self employment; and part-time/seasonal/casual workers who are entitled to Jobseekers Benefit or Allowance. Being forced to indicate one designation alone may facilitate the complex analysis process, but it in no way reflects the diversity of occupational patterns that individuals exhibit, particularly in the current economic environment.

On Sunday, 10^th April we are all asked to make our mark, an action that will define our future policies. The design of the employment questions on the Census form is off the mark and has the potential to exclude, or at the very least, confuse those having multiple roles in our society. As a result, it will not paint a true picture of the textured and rich career patterns the population has.

The 2011 Census - What will it tell us?

There have been regular reports in the media in recent months that say the size of the Irish workforce has been decreasing over the past two years, as more and more non-Irish and Irish nationals leave the country, and that unemployment has been rising starkly. Is this a fair reflection of what has been happening?

The most recent population figures available show that emigration from Ireland in the twelve months to April 2010 was estimated to have remained broadly constant at 65,300 for the previous year. However, the number of immigrants into Ireland fell sharply, from 57,300 to 30,800, over the same period. These combined changes have resulted in an increase in net outward migration from 7,800 in April 2009 to 34,500 in April 2010. While the level of overall migration remained relatively constant during that period emigration among Irish nationals increased significantly as a percentage of overall emigration last year, up from 18,400 in April 2009 to 27,700 in April 2010. This is the highest level of net outward migration since 1989 and there is strong evidence of further net emigration already during the past year and the ESRI estimated that the level of net migration ran at approximately 8,000 per month during the first quarter of 2011. Against this background we have seen a shrinking of the size of our labour force, i.e. those available to work, over much of the past two years.

The forthcoming Census in April 2011 will provide a much more accurate baseline figure for the size of the population, the level of emigration that has taken place and the workforce. It will ask questions about where people live now and where they lived one year ago, as well as nationality and ethnic/cultural background, to give a more accurate and up-to-date, picture. The overall picture to emerge is likely to be one of a population and a workforce that is still growing over the long term, but which has been beset by short-medium term net emigration, particularly among younger, male, Irish nationals.

More importantly, the 2011 census will also ask about whether people consider themselves to be employed, unemployed, retired, studying, etc. Since the 2006 Census we have had to rely on estimates of the unemployment rate based on two, smaller, monthly and quarterly surveys that take place on a regular basis. The monthly figures that make headlines in the media tend to be these, despite their being based on a benchmark last established in 2006. The published figures rely on Live Register statistics from the Department of Social Protection and these are adjusted each quarter with results from the CSO’s own Household Budget Survey. These two sources only give a partial picture of employment and can only guesstimate the level of employment and unemployment to provide the monthly labour force statistics. As one statistician put it – it’s like sending a rocket into space, and not checking if it is on course for five years : usually the instruments will give you a rough idea of where you are, but you can never really be sure until you return to Earth!

The number of people in employment overall was estimated to have fallen from 2.1 million in 2008, to 1.9 million in 2009, and to 1.83 million by March 2011. Unemployment has continued to rise throughout although it seems to have stabilised sometime between the beginning of this year and now. The last Quarterly Household Budget Survey (for October – December 2010) statistics issued in mid-March showed a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 14.7% overall.

It is easy to get bogged down in the detail of monthly and quarterly estimates. The more accurate figures are those that come about as a result of the Census. It is worth noting that the percentage of the labour force unemployed was just 4.5% of the total workforce back in May 2006 when the last, full Census was conducted. In real terms, by April 2011 there were an estimated 1.83 million people employed and the unemployment percentage of the workforce has more than trebled over the past five years to an estimated 14.7%.

An interesting aside here is that direct costs related to unemployment have risen significantly in the past few years. Social welfare expenditure amounted to 15.6% of Gross national income in 2009. Ten years previously it was just 8.2%.