The quarterly Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin and the second report of findings from the Guernsey Community Survey have been released.
The Population, Employment and Earnings Bulletin contains extra information to help understand the impacts that lockdown had on the workforce (based on a snapshot taken at the end of June, using the electronic census).
The second report of Community Survey findings focuses on the community’s experiences of job-seeking, working and studying during lockdown. Some of the headlines are:
- In June 2020, 30,135 people were employed or self-employed in Guernsey compared with 31,544 in June 2019.
- 3,019 people were self-employed and 27,116 people worked for an employer (10.0% and 90.0% respectively). This compares to 28,523 employed and 3,021 self-employed people in June 2019, annual decreases of 4.9% and 0.1%
- The reduced number of employees were seen to result largely from lower numbers of people classed as permanent residents being in employment compared with June 2019.
- In June 2020, the median earnings of employees was 2.5% higher in nominal terms and 0.7% higher in real terms than a year earlier. The overall impact of having larger decreases in the numbers of employees in the lower earning brackets than in the upper earnings brackets is a higher median.
- The percentage of the workforce registered wholly unemployed (which is available sooner than employment data) had fallen to 1.8% by 3 October from a peak of 5.2% in late May.
- Survey responses showed that 21% of employed, self-employed and respondents in full time education or training rated their life satisfaction as seven or more out of eight in 2020, compared with 24% in 2018.
- 21% of self-employed survey respondents thought some aspects of the lockdown restrictions were not fair or justified, compared to 13% of employed respondents and 4% of those seeking employment.
- Lockdown had a negative or strongly negative impact on the mental health of 39% of employed respondents and 35% of self-employed respondents. The sector with the highest proportion of respondents who reported a negative or strongly negative impact on their mental health was the Information and communication sector (52% reported a negative or strongly negative impact on their mental health in this sector). There was a corresponding increase in workload/hours and a negative impact on work-life balance for some workers in this sector. Critical workers were more likely to report a positive or strongly positive impact on their mental health than non-critical workers (25% and 22% respectively).
- 38% of employed respondents and 34% of self-employed respondents indicated that lockdown had a positive impact on physical health. 20% and 17% of employed and self-employed respondents respectively said it had a negative impact. For those seeking work the trend was more negative with 21% indicating a positive impact on physical health and 28% negative.
Helen Walton, Head of Data & Analysis for the States of Guernsey, said: “We’ve published these two reports alongside each other to try and give as full a picture of the economically active population as we can. We’ve been able to use the electronic census to provide some extra details to supplement what we routinely publish and help understand the statistics that are emerging.
“The survey results add an extra dimension, by showing the personal impacts of lockdown on employees and self-employees by sector, plus the experiences of those that were job-seekers or students during lockdown. We will continue to analyse the data in more detail and we are planning to issue further detailed reports with more findings from the survey later in the year”.
