Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The UK Commission’s Employer Skills Survey is a biennial UK-wide individual establishment telephone survey, providing the most detailed picture of training, vacancies, skills gaps, and investment in training. The aims are to provide rigorous and robust intelligence on the UK labour market and the market for skills. The ESS sits alongside the Employer Perspectives Survey (EPS) to produce insights that complement each other and are run in alternate years. The focus of the Employer Perspectives Survey is primarily outward-looking, covering provision of and engagement with the wider skills system, whereas the Employer Skills Survey is inward-looking and measures the current skills position and skill needs of employers. The 2015 Employer Skills Survey had two facets:The core survey of circa 91,000 establishments, covering business strategy, recruitment, retention, skills gaps, training and workforce development, and high performance working; and the Investment in Training follow-up survey of circa 13,000 establishments, covering the investment establishments make in training their staff. The 2015 survey is the third UK-wide skills survey. Further information can be found on the gov.uk Employer Skills Survey webpage. For the third edition (December 2017), updated versions of the main data file (skills included), occupational data file and England LEP data files were deposited. Previous errors had been discovered that affected questions related to vacancies where the survey asked for the specific occupation, and these have now been rectified. A new document has also been provided, covering the impact of the changes on some weighting variables in the main data file. Main Topics:Topics covered by this study include the following: establishment characteristics; recruitment and vacancies; demand for skills and skills gap; hard-to-fill vacancies; workforce development and training; skills...