Commuting Data

Futureskills Scotland has produced a series of commuting matrices from Census data.  They have been produced to inform analysis of the local labour market at the Local Economic Forum (LEF) and Metropolitan Region level.

The approach addresses a number of issues raised by Network colleagues and other stakeholders, specifically:

• the requirement for commuting flow information on a LEF and metro-region basis;
• the need for such information to be provided in an easy-to-read format, with appropriate summaries of key information;
• the importance of producing such information for various subgroups of the labour force, such as specific occupational groups; and
• extending the Scottish information to include cross-border commuting with other areas of the UK.

A guidance note and technical note are provided for users.  It is recommended that users review both notes before undertaking any analysis of the data.

Commuting Data - Guidance and Technical Notes - The guidance note covers geographical definitions, the structure of the tables and the information contained within them.  It also sets out other factors to be considered, the limitations on use and gives an example looking at managerial and elementary occupations within one LEF area (2006, 3 pages).  The technical note provides definitions for all the terms used within the tables and an example of how the summary statistics are calculated (2006, 3 pages).

The commuting data tables are organised into three strands: