Updated 28 September 2012
Number of employees in a pension scheme sponsored by their employer technical description
| Short title | Number of employees in a pension scheme sponsored by their employer |
|---|---|
| Technical definition | This indicator measures the number of employee jobs where the individual is aged at least 22 and under State Pension age (SPA) and earning above the earnings threshold for automatic enrolment who are participating in a pension scheme sponsored by their employer. An individual may have more than one job. |
| Rationale | It is estimated that around 11 million people are not saving enough for their retirement. A key element of the Government’s pensions reform outlined in the DWP Business Plan is the introduction of automatic enrolment whereby employers will be required to automatically enrol all eligible workers into a workplace pension, starting from October 2012. Automatic enrolment is intended to overcome the barriers to saving by harnessing inertia – ie rather having to decide to save in a workplace pension; an employee has to make an active decision not to save (opt-out). The incentive to save is reinforced by a mandatory minimum employer contribution. The Coalition Agreement set out the Government’s commitment to go ahead with the implementation of automatic enrolment. It is estimated that between 5 and 8 million people will be newly saving, or saving more, in a workplace pension as a result of the reforms. SRP4 – Pensions reform. |
| Formula | Using the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE); all employee jobs (including those affected by absence) with an employer sponsored pension (Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, Group Personal Pension, Stakeholder Pension and unknown pension type) and age = > 22 and age < SPA (currently 65 for men and 60 for women) and annual gross earnings > earnings threshold (£8,105 in 2012/13 earnings terms). Worked Example: 2009 ASHE 12.6m employees with a pension, of which 11.5m are aged at least 22 and under SPA and earn above the earnings threshold £8,105 per annum in 2012/13 earnings terms (£7,803 in 2009 terms) |
| Start date | Data available in a consistent format from 2005 |
| Good performance | An increase of at least 100,000 employee jobs, based on unrounded data would demonstrate that an improvement has been achieved |
| Behavioural impact | No behavioural impact |
| Comparability | Not an internationally recognised indicator that can be used to make comparisons |
| Collection frequency | Annually. Data collected relate to a specific reference data in April. |
| Time lag | Pensions data relating to April are generally released in February of the following year |
| Data source (which data collection it comes from) | Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE). This is an Office for National Statistics (ONS) Survey |
| Type of data (Whether it is an official statistic, national statistic, survey, MI ) | Survey data – data not published in this format, produced by custom analysis of the ASHE. The indicator is based on around 140,000 employee jobs. |
| Robustness and data limitations |
No known quality issues. Analyses are National Statistics produced to high professional standards Good fit between data and indicator being measured. The Department has oversight of the controls operated by the Office for National Statistics as it is represented on the survey’s cross Government user group. An indication of the quality of estimates is included as part of tables provided by the Office for National Statistics. This is measured by its coefficient of variation (CV), which is the ratio of the standard error of an estimate to the estimate. See:
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| Collecting organisation | Data are collected and processed by the Office for National Statistics. Analysis is performed by DWP analysts. |
| Return format | The unit of measurement is number of employee jobs. |
| Geographical coverage | Great Britain |
| How indicator can be broken down | Further breakdowns available by gender, and age. |
| Further guidance | Methodology and guidance for ASHE can be found at:
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