You asked
Can you provide global historical career data - i.e. anyone who has moved from one job to another or from a specific degree to a job? I am interested in the following data:
- Job role/title
- Company
- Duration of time in job
- Previous job role/title
- Previous company
- Duration of time in previous job
- Degree Subject
- University where degree was obtained
We said
Thank you for your query regarding career histories. We do not hold exactly the information you have requested.
However, there are three possible sources of information that might be of help but none of them would provide you with the complete picture.
The first is the Labour Force Survey/Annual Population Survey. This survey collects a range of detailed information about individuals' labour market status and characteristics, through interviews. It would not tell you the company that an individual works for but it does have information on an individual for their current occupation, occupation twelve months ago, highest level of qualification and the subject of the interviewee's first degree. This information on qualifications would not be available on either of the other two sources.
The second possible is the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings panel dataset. This panel version of the dataset would track a sample of individuals over their employment history. Although you would not get information on company or qualifications, you would be able to track occupation history and additionally you would be able to see job changes and whether these changes resulted in an occupation change.
The final possible is PAYE administrative data. This would give you information on the company employment history of an individual over time but would not have information on occupation or qualifications.
Both first two sources are datasets owned by ONS, but disclosure of this information is prohibited by the section 39 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. In order to access either of these datasets someone would need to apply to become an accredited researcher in order to access the data through our secure research service. Information regarding the accredited researcher scheme is published on our website.
The PAYE data is owned by Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs (HMRC) and you would need to discuss with them what would be possible for an approved researcher in the HMRC Datalab.