Background To The Northern Ireland Census of Employment
The Census of Employment is a statutory enquiry of all employers in Northern Ireland, carried out biennially under the Statistics of Trade and Employment (Northern Ireland) Order 1988. Results in this publication are disaggregated into the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC92) and are available according to sex, full or part-time working and industrial activity subject to confidentiality constraints.
The Census of Employment covers employee jobs only. It excludes:
agriculture (but includes animal husbandry service activities and hunting, trapping and game propagation)
the self employed
HM armed Forces
private domestic servants
homeworkers
jobskills trainees without a contract of employment (non-employed status)
Figures for the number of employees in Agriculture are available separately from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development's (DARD) Farm Census.
Persons working 30 hours or less per week are normally regarded as being in part-time employment.
The Census of Employment counts the number of jobs rather than the number of persons with jobs. Therefore a person holding both a full-time and a part-time job, or someone with two part-time jobs, will be counted twice.
Employees are classified to the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC92) from the main business description for each employment unit. When using the Census of Employment results it is important to be aware that not all sub-activities of a business are coded individually. For example Information Technology (IT) jobs will not be coded to 'Computer and Related Activities' if the employer's main business is not computer related e.g. IT jobs within a large bank would be coded to 'Financial Intermediation' and not to 'Computer and Related Activities'.
More details from the Census of Employment including District Council Area (DCA's), Parliamentary Constituency Area (PCA's) and Ward level data are available, subject to confidentiality constraints, from:
Census Section
Statistics Research Branch
Department of Enterprise, Trade & Investment
Netherleigh
Massey Avenue
Belfast
BT4 2JP
Telephone: (028) 9052 9379
Fax: (028) 9052 9459
Web Site: www.detini.gov.uk/deti-stats-index.htm
