Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. 

The National Employer Skills Survey (NESS) collected data about the skills of the workforce of firms in England. It provides detailed information about employers’ recruitment problems, experience of skill gaps and engagement in training. NESS 2005 shares the aims of the 2003 and 2004 studies, namely to provide detailed analysis of the extent and nature of employers’ recruitment problems, skills gaps and training activity. NESS 2005 also involved detailed follow-up work assessing employer expenditure on training and development, something not covered in NESS 2003 or NESS 2004. It is a major research study allowing detailed and statistically reliable analysis of findings at national, regional and sector level within England. The survey was conducted every two years from 2001 until 2009 by the Learning and Skills Council. After this responsibility for the survey passed to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and it was merged with other employer skills surveys around the UK to form the UK Employer Skills Survey in 2011 (UK Data Archive SN 7430; SN 7484). The data from NESS is comparable with the England data from the UK Employer Skills Survey. A separate, but similar survey to NESS is conducted in Scotland (the Scottish Employer Skills Survey, held by UK Data Archive under SN 6857).

Main Topics:

The survey coverage falls into four major categories: hard-to-fill vacancies and skills-shortage vacancies; skills gaps; workforce training and development; quality of education leavers. In addition, from 2005 an annex survey was conducted, which collected data from firms about the cost of providing training (for example, fees paid to external training providers for staff).

Multi-stage stratified random sample

Telephone interview