Request
Could you tell me the current size of the 12-17 year old population in the UK and projections for the next 5 years. And similarly for the 18-25 and 26-30 age groups for the same period. For the 18-25 year old group could you also give me a breakdown of how many are in education, how many are in work and how many are unemployed.
Response
I have been asked to reply to your question regarding the current and projected size of the UK population for the age-groups 12-17, 18-25 and 26-30. For the 18-25 age-group you have also requested data broken down by education, employment and unemployment.
The most recent national population projections, based on the resident population of the UK at the middle of 2010, were published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 26 October 2011. Table 1 gives the population estimates for 2010 and projected population for the years 2011-2017 for the requested age-groups.
Table 2 gives the population of 18-25 year-olds in employment, unemployed and economically inactive. Employment (or unemployment) and educational status are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, the table has been produced breaking down the 18-25 year old population by those employed, unemployed or economically inactive by whether they are in education or not.
1 Economically inactive people are not in work and do not meet the internationally agreed definition of unemployment. They are people without a job who have not actively sought work in the last four weeks and/or are not available to start work in the next two weeks.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is weighted using household population, which excludes communal establishments, that is derived from the mid-year estimates and subsequent projections. These mid-year estimates and projections are applied to each May-July three-month period of the LFS reference period and interpolated from those to produce a quarterly estimate.
Further detail on LFS weighting methods (74.6 Kb Pdf)
The 'population' estimate in Table 2 which is relevant to the LFS sample is not directly comparable with the population estimates and projections in Table 1 which contain the resident populations in communal establishments as well as those in households
