Methodology

Data Sources

Employment, earnings, claimant, and business data accessed via Nomis (nomisweb.co.uk). House prices from HM Land Registry linked data (landregistry.data.gov.uk). Deprivation from MHCLG.

Location Quotients

A location quotient (LQ) measures the relative concentration of an industry in a local area compared to a reference economy (England).

Shift-Share Analysis

Shift-share decomposes employment change in each sector into three components:

Validation: For every sector, the three components sum exactly to the actual employment change. This is a mathematical identity, not an approximation.

House Prices

Median house prices are sourced from the HM Land Registry Price Paid dataset via their SPARQL linked data endpoint. We use December average prices for each year (2015 onwards) to provide consistent annual snapshots.

The price-to-earnings ratio divides the median house price by median annual workplace earnings (from ASHE) for the same local authority. Year-on-year change is calculated from the two most recent December figures available.

Indices of Deprivation

The English Indices of Deprivation 2019 (published by MHCLG) rank every local authority across seven domains of deprivation: Income, Employment, Education, Health, Crime, Barriers to Housing and Services, and Living Environment.

We use the "Rank of average rank" measure, which summarises each LA's position relative to all 317 English local authorities (where rank 1 is the most deprived). Percentiles are derived from these ranks so that higher values indicate greater deprivation.

The radar chart displays percentile scores across all seven domains, giving an at-a-glance view of a local authority's deprivation profile. Note that the IMD was last updated in 2019 and may not reflect recent changes.

Business Environment

Enterprise counts come from the UK Business Counts dataset on Nomis, which is derived from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). This covers VAT and/or PAYE registered businesses.

Size bands follow the standard classification: micro (0-9 employees), small (10-49), medium (50-249), and large (250+). The three-year trend shows net change in total active enterprises, and the growth rate is calculated from the earliest to the latest available year.

Interactive Map

The homepage choropleth map uses Local Authority District boundaries from the ONS Open Geography Portal (December 2023 vintage, super-generalised and clipped to the coastline). Boundaries are rendered as SVG using react-simple-maps.

Colour scales use the 5th and 95th percentile of each metric to set the range, preventing extreme outliers from compressing the visible variation. The claimant rate metric uses an inverted orange scale (higher values appear darker) since higher claimant rates indicate weaker labour markets.

Limitations

• BRES employment figures are rounded to the nearest 100 by ONS for disclosure control. Small sectors may have proportionally large rounding effects.
• ASHE earnings data may be suppressed for small areas or sectors with fewer than 30 respondents.
• Census 2021 data reflects a single point in time (March 2021) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Occupation and qualification distributions may have shifted since.
• House prices are December annual averages from HM Land Registry. They may differ from UKHPI or other published indices which use different methodologies.
• The Indices of Deprivation were last published in 2019 and do not capture post-pandemic changes.
• Business counts cover only VAT/PAYE registered enterprises. Self-employed individuals below the VAT threshold are excluded.
• Some local authority boundaries were merged between 2019 and 2023. A small number of abolished districts may appear without data on the map.
• Location quotients are sensitive to the reference economy chosen. We use England as the benchmark throughout.
• Coverage spans 391 local authorities across England, Wales, and Scotland. Northern Ireland is not yet included.