You asked:

Is it possible to provide a breakdown of the number of responses for SOC 8141 by age band, i.e. 16-19, 20-24, 25-29 etc up to 65+? What I am trying to find out is the numbers of scaffolders who work within those different age bands, particularly in the 50-54, 55-59, 60-64 and 65+ bands.

We said:

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the breakdown of the number of responses in the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) for SOC 8141 by specified age band. The number of responses for SOC 8141 for 2016 (the latest period for which ASHE data are available) can be found in Table 1. Please note that these figures refer to the number of responses to the ASHE survey, as per your clarification, and not the total number of scaffolders employed as per your original request. ASHE is based on a 1% sample of employee jobs, drawn from HM Revenue and Customs Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records. Therefore the number of responses to the survey does not give you an estimate of the number of scaffolders in the entire UK employee population.

The data have been filtered to include only employees on full adult rates of pay and exclude employees whose earnings were affected by absence. These are the same filters that are used in the published ASHE datasets.

The data in Table 1 have been supressed and rounded for disclosure reasons. All age bands with fewer than 5 responses have been supressed (these records have been marked with an ‘x’ in Table 1) and the remaining data have been rounded to the nearest 5 responses.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us on earnings@ons.gov.uk