Unemployment datasets

Measures#

Each measure is one kind of value you can request, using its id.

“Adds up” means you can total it over areas or convert it to other areas. See Measures and periods for why some can't be combined.

Areas and years#

Request each of these with its geography and code year as geography and boundaryYear.

Things to know#

• Unemployed residents aged 16 and over as a share of the economically active: those in work or looking for it. A rate does not add over areas.
• ONS model-based estimates, combining Annual Population Survey unemployment with the claimant count averaged over twelve months. They are the final edition: ONS discontinued the series in August 2022, and current local estimates are published in its LI01 tables instead.
• Periods to 2003 are financial years, labelled like 1996-97; periods from 2004 are calendar years. Survey responses from January 2020 to March 2022 were reweighted by the publisher in June 2022.
• Buckinghamshire and the two Northamptonshire authorities are served only in the April 2021 partition, and the districts they replaced only in the April 2019 one, so no partition counts anyone twice. The model's estimate for a new authority is its own, and need not equal its districts' combined estimate.
• A sum of these modelled levels is itself an estimate. Its uncertainty is not the sum of its members' intervals, so no interval is given for a sum.

Corrections and improvements#

These reviewed changes apply to what the API serves for this data. The publisher's source files are not changed; when a code correction applies, the served record retains the publisher's code as sourceAreaCode.

curl "https://api.ukdataatlas.com/v1/corrections?measure=unemployment-rate"

Request it#

Get the first page of unemployment-rate for local authorities:

curl "https://api.ukdataatlas.com/v1/data/unemployment-rate?period=2021&geography=localAuthority&boundaryYear=2019&limit=5"

Read the measure's full definition, including every period it's published for:

curl "https://api.ukdataatlas.com/v1/measures/unemployment-rate"

Source and licence#

Downloads#

Download complete publisher-observation files instead of paging through the API. Each file has a stable hash and covers one measure, period set and source geography. Any reviewed served code correction is documented and retains its publisher code on the affected record. The source and licence information above applies to these files too; preserve the attribution and note any cleaning or reformatting when you redistribute one.