Selected job details

Length of time since last did paid work 

(if currently not employed but have had paid work)

Which year did you leave your last paid job?

Interviewer notes:

• This question does not include casual or holiday work.

Edits:

hard check

• Year of leaving your last paid job cannot be in the future.

Which month in that year did you leave?

Year of starting work

In which year did you start working continuously for your current employer?

Interviewer instructions:

• If a respondent has a contract that is renewed, for example yearly, you should take the respondent opinion as to how long they have worked continuously for their employer.
• We are interested in continuous employment with their current employer. Any previous separate spells of work with their current employer should be ignored.
• If the respondent’s company or firm changed ownership but his or her conditions of employment did not change it should be treated as one continuous period of employment. However if the respondent was made redundant and then re-employed by the new owners, then it would be the date they were re-employed that would be entered.

Edit:

hard check

• year of starting to work continuously for your current employer should be the same or earlier than year of interview.

hard check

• If self-employed

In which year did you start working continuously as a self-employed person?

Interviewer instruction:

• We are interested in the length of time the respondent has been continuously self-employed even if he or she has been doing different jobs or running different businesses during that time.

Edits:

hard check

• Year of starting to work continuously as a self-employed person should be the same as or earlier than year of interview.

hard check

• Are you sure? started self-employed business when aged less that 16?

soft check

if less than or equal to 8 years

And which month was that?

Interviewer notes:

Definition of main job

• Respondents with more than one job in the reference week should decide themselves which is their main job. Only if they are unable to do so should the LFS criterion be applied: the job which was the largest number of hours.

Do you ever do any work which you would regard as paid or unpaid overtime?

1. Yes
2. No

Interviewer instructions:

• ‘Ever’ means whatever the respondent takes it to mean. If the respondent is unable to answer, refer to the last four weeks (as in the questions below).
• The words ‘which you would regard..’ are an important part of this question as we are specifically interested in whether the respondent considers that they do any overtime, not whether the employer would officially class it as overtime.
• In the case of respondents who are self-employed, some may say that non-productive time, e.g. book-keeping, is paid and some may say it is unpaid overtime. You must accept whatever the respondent regards the overtime as.

How many hours per week do you usually work in your (main) job/business – please exclude meals breaks?

Interviewer notes:

• Accept the answer given. For example, for teachers it may very well exceed a basic 27 to 28 hours.
• For the questions relating to hours of work the hours should be recorded to the nearest 15 minutes, with part- hours as decimals, for example, 36 hrs 30 minutes would be recorded as 36.5, 40 hrs 45 minutes would be recorded as 40.75.
• If the work pattern is not based on a week, get an average over the last four weeks.
• If the respondent has been off sick for a long period, take the usual hours worked before going sick.
• If a person has started a new job in the reference week the usual hours should relate to what the person expects them to be in the future.
• For apprentices, trainees and other people in vocational training exclude any time spent in school or other special training centres outside their workplace.
• Self-employed people often find it difficult to give precise figures. It is important, however, that we have information about their hours worked to compare these with the hours worked by employees. If necessary, encourage them to work things through on a daily basis and get as accurate a figure as possible.
• Respondents working on-call: If someone states, when asked the hours questions, that they usually work 24 hours a day because they are ‘on-call’, probe for the average number of hours actually worked. Identify how many hours were actually worked in the last four weeks and average these out to give a weekly total for usual hours. This should include only those hours during which the respondent was actually working. Therefore if, for example, a respondent was on-call all night, but was only called out to work for two hours, the actual working hours for this night would be two hours.

Thinking of your (main) job/business, how many hours per week do you usually work – please exclude meal breaks and overtime?

How many hours PAID overtime do you usually work per week?

Interviewer notes:

• Include overtime hours only. When an employee works on some kind of flexi-time system, paid overtime should be registered only if no compensatory time off is taken. When overtime is worked on a seasonal or irregular basis and the respondent has difficulty in providing a ‘usual’ figure, take the average over the last four weeks.
• Include hours worked at home if paid.

How many hours UNPAID overtime do you usually work per week?

Interviewer notes:

• Include unpaid hours worked at home (e.g. teachers preparing lessons) as well as unpaid hours worked at the workplace.

Your total usual hours come to (n). Is that about right, or not?

1. Yes, right
2. No

Edit:

hard check

• Total must be agreed with respondent

Output Categories: Length of time since last did paid work (if not currently in employment)

Output Categories: Time in present job

Output Categories: Usual hours worked in main job

Email: gsshelp@statistics.gov.uk