Number of full time employees working in London paid at the "higher rate"

You asked

​Please can I make a FOI request for the following information:

Thee number of full time employees working for organisations in London paid at the "high rate" (as defined in the publication below) or more?

Please can I have this data in respect of the same time period covered by the publication below (2019).

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/adhocs/10847annualsurveyofhoursandearningsashegrossannualearningsforthe90to99percentilesofemployeejobsbysectorintheukandregions2018and2019

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request regarding the number of full-time employees working for organisations in London paid at the "high rate" as defined by the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) - Gross Annual Earnings for the 90 to 99 percentiles of employee jobs by sector in the UK and Regions, 2018 and 2019 dataset.

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), carried out in April each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs taken from HM Revenue and Customs' Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. Consequently, individuals with more than one job may appear in the sample more than once.

Assuming you mean the "high rate" in the dataset to be the 90th percentile, this means that 90% of employee jobs are below that rate and therefore 10% of employees are at or above that rate. There are 2,595,000 (to the nearest thousand) full-time employees working in London in April 2019, as per the dataset you referenced, therefore there are 259,500 employees earning at or above the 90th percentile.

However, please note that ASHE is not designed to measure number of employee jobs, and job numbers are included in our published tables for indicative purposes only. They should not be considered accurate estimates and caution should be applied when using them.