11. strengths and limitations  pre-release data  hm revenue and customs (hmrc) grants pre-release access to official statistics publications. as this is a joint release, and in accordance with the hmrc policy, pre-release access has been granted to a number of people to enable the preparation of statistical publications and ministerial briefing. further details, including a list of those granted access, can be found on hmrc’s website.  the bank of england was granted exceptional pre-release access to this bulletin and accompanying tables at 1:00pm on friday 11 march 2022 so that the data were available for the monetary policy committee (mpc) meeting held on that day. see exchange of letters requesting exceptional pre-release access so that data are available for discussion at the mpc.  experimental statistics status  this is a joint experimental release between hmrc and the office for national statistics (ons). the existing monthly publications produced by the ons remain the primary national statistics for the labour market. the intention is that these new statistics will also be updated on a monthly basis.  the release is classed as experimental statistics as the methodologies used to produce the statistics are still in their development phase. this does not mean that the statistics are of low quality, but it does signify that the statistics are new and still being developed. as the methodologies are refined and improved, there may be revisions to these statistics.  rather than waiting until the development work has been completed, the statistics are being published now to involve potential users in developing the statistics. we hope that this encourages users to provide us with their thoughts and suggestions on how useful the statistics are and what can be done to improve them. you can send us your comments by email.  more information about experimental statistics, including when they should be used and the differences between them and national statistics, is available.  strengths of the data  as pay as you earn (paye) real time information (rti) data cover the whole population, rather than a sample of people or companies, we are able to use these to produce estimates for geographic areas and other more detailed breakdowns of the population. the methods for producing such breakdowns are under development and we expect to include further statistics in a future release. these statistics can help inform decision-making across the country. they also have the potential to provide more timely estimates than existing measures.  these statistics also have the potential to replace some of those based on surveys, which could reduce the burden on businesses needing to fill in statistical surveys.  imputation and revisions  a limitation of the calendarisation used is that the figures for pay and numbers of employees in month t depend on payments made in month t plus 1. this means only around 80% of the data used in the calculation on month t statistics are available at the end of each month.  rather than wait until all those remaining payment returns have been received, we have decided to produce a timelier measure of numbers of employees and median pay by imputing the values for missing returns. the data on which the statistics are based were extracted at the beginning of march 2022, which means around 1% to 2% of the data for january 2022 are imputed, while around 15% of the data for the “flash” february 2022 data are imputed. as a result, the figures in future releases will be updated as new payment returns are received, and the imputation payments can be replaced with actual data.  starting with the december 2020 publication, we introduced a revisions policy. for each publication, we incorporate new input data only for the latest two tax years. in may of each year, new input data will be incorporated for the whole data time series. the benefit of introducing this revisions policy is that we can use the processing time saved to produce and publish more detailed breakdowns.  seasonal adjustment  the seasonal adjustment applied in this bulletin follows established best practice. this approach assumes that any seasonal patterns remain broadly consistent over time. if the seasonal pattern changes in strength, this will be represented as greater volatility in the seasonally adjusted figures. both the seasonal and non-seasonally adjusted data sets are released alongside this bulletin.  differences compared with the labour force survey and average weekly earnings statistics  further information about the methodology used and comparisons with the ons’s labour force survey (lfs) and average weekly earnings can be found in new methods for monthly earnings and employment estimates from pay as you earn real time information (paye rti) data: december 2019.  the strengths and weaknesses of these sources and other labour market data sources is shown in our comparison of labour market data sources methodology, including the advantages of new administrative data sources and limitations of some of our published figures.
earnings and employment from pay as you earn real time information, uk