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IZA Discussion Paper No. 17291
September 2024
Revisiting Sample Bias in the UK's Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, with Implications for Estimates of Low Pay and the Bite of the National Living Wage

published online as 'The Representativeness of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings and its Implications for UK Wage Policy' in: British Journal of Industrial Relations, 25 August 2025

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) is based on an annual one per cent sample of employee jobs and provides many of the UK's official earnings statistics. These statistics are generated using official weights designed to make the achieved sample in each year representative of the population of employee jobs in Britain by gender, age, occupation, and region. However, we find that jobs in small, young, private-sector organisations remain under-represented after weighting. Additionally, there is evidence of systematic year-to-year longitudinal attrition among employees who remain in scope, for which no official weighting adjustment exists. We develop new weights to address these issues, demonstrating their importance through policy-relevant examples. Our new estimates suggest that the bite of the National Living Wage is greater, and that progress toward the target for eradicating low pay has been faster, than previously understood.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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