An article giving guidance for using public/private estimates from BRES (pdf) has been published on the ONS website.

This article seeks to:

  1. explain the robust methodological approach for defining the public and private sector;
  2. show how different definitions of what constitutes the “public sector” can lead to very different results when attempting to measure public sector employees;
  3. show the strengths that BRES has to offer when comparing public and private sector estimates at a sub-regional level.

In particular, it looks at issues that are encountered when defining the public sector by industry (Standard Industrial Classification, SIC) rather than the established method of using the legal status of the business. It explores in detail the different results that are produced by these two approaches, when applied BRES data.

A publicly available dataset giving public/private estimates is available in the Nomis query facility:

  • Business Register and Employment Survey - public/private sector data   [link to data]