House of Commons - Public Accounts

Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence

Supplementary memorandum submitted by the Department for Work and Pensions

Question 36 (Mr Austin Mitchell): Number of migrants entering work

Numbers derived from responses to the Labour Force Survey, which are then grossed up to make estimates for the overall labour market, show that in 2005-06 over 1.6 million people entered work from unemployment and almost two million entered work from economic inactivity. At the same time 1.4 million people left work for unemployment and just more than two million left work for inactivity. Over 2.9 million people moved between jobs. This reflects the fluidity of the labour market.

The Labour Force Survey provides a breakdown by country of birth to indicate the number of migrants in the UK. The data available indicates that around 0.2 million of the 1.6 million people who entered work from unemployment in 2005-06 were foreign born, while over 0.2 million of the almost 2.0 million people who entered employment from inactivity were foreign born. The results shown broadly reflect the proportion of the overall working age population in the UK that the foreign born represent so they are neither over nor under represented in the overall flows within the labour market.

It should be noted that these results are intended to provide a broad picture of the flows within the labour market and are not an exact estimate. The robustness of the estimates provided relating to only foreign born people, while still within ONS guidelines for publication, is lower than the overall figures provided previously as it represents less than 1% of the dataset. Due to the small sample size we are unable to provide a more detailed breakdown. These figures relate to people who are foreign born, or those who are born outside of the UK, rather than those who are foreign nationals.

The data does not allow us to identify time of arrival in the UK for those who are foreign born and so, for example, it is not possible to identify recent Polish migrants within these figures. A respondent will only be picked up in the analysis if they provide a response in two consecutive quarters of data. This means that, for example, a Pole arriving in the country and quickly finding employment will not be picked up in a flow between employment statuses. If the Pole had been in the country for enough time (at least six months) to take part in the survey and he was initially in inactivity in the first quarter he is asked, but in the next quarter was in employment then he would be picked up in the flow from inactivity to employment.

Detailed analysis (eg on migrants) on LFS microdata are less reliable than aggregated statistics. All figures above are weighted to population estimates made in 2003 (whereas headline statistics are grossed to 2006 estimates), and may undercount the number of people born overseas for the following reasons:

— it excludes those resident in the UK less than six month;

— it excludes people in most communal establishments;

— it excludes students in halls who do not have a UK resident parent; and

— results are weighted to estimates of the "usually resident" UK population living in private households, which do not include people moving to the UK for less than 12 months.

Question 111 (Chairman): Employment retention and advancement demonstration project (ERAd)

The ERA demonstration project was implemented in 2003 in six Jobcentre Plus districts in order to test the effectiveness of a package of support in helping customers sustain and progress in employment.

ERA is targeted at three groups:

— lone parents on Income Support, who volunteer for the New Deal for Lone Parents (NDLP) programme;

— JSA customers that are mandated to New Deal 25+ (ND25+); and

— lone parents who are already working part time (between 16 and 29 hours a week) and are receiving Working Tax Credit (WTC).

The full programme lasts 33 months. Customers on the ERA programme receive up to nine months pre-employment assistance (largely following the same procedures as the regular New Deal programme). They are offered the following support once in employment:

— In-work advisory support from Jobcentre Plus: to help customers with the transition into work, and to help them advance to positions of greater job security and better pay and conditions;

— an employment retention bonus for staying in full-time work for 13 out of every 17 weeks. The bonus of £400 is available up to six times;

— access to emergency payments to overcome short-term barriers to staying in work; and

— training tuition assistance (up to £1,000) and a training bonus for completing training while employed (also up to £1,000).

There is a budget of £30 million to implement, deliver and evaluate ERA. Sixteen-thousand individuals were randomly assigned to either a programme or control group. The ERAd intervention was delivered to 8,000 individuals over a period of four years, providing intensive pre and post-employment support to help them remain and advance in work. At its inception, ERA was the largest experimental research design of a social programme in the UK.

The ERAd evaluation will continue until 2010. However, evidence on the outcomes one year after entering the programme was published in March 2007, and is extremely encouraging. Key emerging findings are:

— After one year on the programme, NDLP customers earned substantially more than they would have had they not received the ERA service (£811 pounds more—a 29 percentage point increase).

— For the ND25+ group customers receiving ERA earned 12 percentage points more (a £291 increase) than those that did not. This difference was only statistically significant in one district.

— ERA did not substantially increase first year earnings among the WTC LP customer group, but did increase their likelihood of working full time (a 10 percentage point increase). ERA also increased the likelihood of lone parents working full-time (seven percentage points increase).

— NDLP and ND25+ customers were less likely to be in receipt of benefit after one year on the programme. NDLP customers were 4 percentage points less likely to receive IS, and ND25+ customers were 5 percentage points less likely to be in receipt of JSA.

— ERA customers were more likely to combine education or training with employment than they would have without the programme: 58% of WTC customers (a 14 percentage point increase), 21% of NDLP customers (5 percentage point increase), and 11% of ND25+ group (3 percentage point increase).

The emerging ERA evidence has been central to developing the Department's understanding of "what works" in aiding customers to sustain and advance in employment, and evidence is being used to inform the design of a package of retention support for lone parents, announced in the joint DWP and DIUS publication "Opportunity, Employment and Progression: making skills work" (November 2007).

We will continue to learn lessons from the ERA evaluation as evidence emerges over the course of the next two to three years, and evidence of the impacts 24 months after customers entered the programme will be published in early 2008.

PUBLISHED REPORTS

et al

— Walker R, Hoggart L, Hamilton.G (2006), Making Random Assignment Happen: evidence from the UK Employment and Retention and Advancement Demonstration, DWP research Report 330.

et al



© Parliamentary copyright 2008	Prepared 28 February 2008