For the 2011 Census outputs ONS are proposing a new geography of workplace zones (WPZ) for the publication of workplace statistics. In 2001 the Output Area (OA) hierarchy (produced on a household/residential population threshold) was used but this caused problems in areas with very few or large numbers of workers; the resulting workplace populations varied between 0 and 80,000. The production of WPZ hierarchy propose to improve the outputs available by merging and splitting 2011 OAs so they contain a minimum workforce of 100 person. Other features are:
- coverage will be across England & Wales (no plans curently for Northern Ireland or Scotland to introduce WPZ)
- WPZ will not cross Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs)
- workforce population will exceed the workforce of any single large workplace (625 workers or more) by adding at least 99 other workers
- headcount and headcount flows (area of residence to workplace) will be available for OA/WPZ geographies
More details on the ONS proposals can be found in a recent ONS paper and ongoing consultation on the 2011 outputs produced can be found on the ONS website.
