Abstract

The British census asked employers to record their workforce numbers. The responses to this instruction provide a unique resource on firm size. While the responses were digitized and included in the Individual Census Microdata (I-CeM) deposit, their format limits their utility. A further data deposit, the British Business Census of Entrepreneurs (BBCE), overcomes I-CeM’s deficiencies by infilling data gaps and parsing employer and workforce data into separate fields. This paper evaluates the coverage in I-CeM and BBCE data for this specific census question, and compares these with the published census analysis of the same data. The results prove the benefits of the BBCE data over I-CeM on the subject of firm size, and demonstrate the need for caution in using the published tables.

摘要

英国人口普查要求雇主记录他们的劳动力人数。对该指令的回应提供了关于公司规模的独特资源。虽然这些回答被数字化并包含在个人人口普查微数据 (I-CeM) 存款中，但它们的格式限制了它们的效用。进一步的数据存储，即英国企业家商业普查 (BBCE)，通过填补数据空白并将雇主和劳动力数据解析为不同的字段，克服了 I-CeM 的不足。本文评估了 I-CeM 和 BBCE 数据中针对这一特定人口普查问题的覆盖率，并将这些数据与已发布的相同数据的人口普查分析进行了比较。结果证明 BBCE 数据在公司规模方面优于 I-CeM，并证明在使用已发布的表格时需要谨慎。