To ask the Minister of Finance and Personnel whether his Department consider the breakdown of young people who are not in education, employment or training by Local Government Districts when compiling the Labour Force Survey.

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a sample survey and is primarily designed to provide labour market information at the Northern Ireland (NI) level. Official statistics on the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are available at NI and NUTS III level, but are not currently available from the LFS at Local Government District due to the wide statistical margins of error associated with such estimates at this level of disaggregation.

Table 1 provides NEETs estimates for Northern Ireland and NUTS III areas for information.

Table 1: Young people (16-24) who are NEET by NUTS III area, 2014

Notes:

Figures may not sum due to rounding.

Missing values are apportioned by single year of age for Northern Ireland and by age band for NUTS III area.

1 The confidence intervals show the range that we would expect, in 95% of samples, would contain the true value.

2 Based on ≤15 respondents.

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency is currently combining a number of annual social survey datasets with the LFS sample to provide more robust estimates of economic status, below the NUTS III level.