Understanding Society User Support

Dear Karen,

Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for jbstat in the Covid-19 survey. The only question covering employment status was sempderived but it includes all other statuses than employed and self-employed lumped together in category 4 "No" (that is, not in paid employment). A workaround is combining the information from blnonwork and sempderived, so
1) if someone was employed in Jan/Feb 2020 and then not in paid work in April 2020 (wave 1, ca_sempderived=4) one can assume that the person became unemployed, a similar comparison could be then done for later waves, so if ca_sempderived=1 OR 2 OR 3 and cb_sempderived=4 then one can assume that this person became unemployed; of course, this is an oversimplification as such person could have become e.g. retired etc.;
2) if someone was not in paid work in April 2020 (ca_sempderived=4) than one can assume that the most probable trajectory was staying in the same category e.g. long-term sick/disabled or retired which could be copied from blnonwork, again, this is an oversimplification as there could have been movement between non-employment categories and it is also not possible to identify any such movements during the pandemic, that is, between Covid-19 survey waves.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Piotr
UKHLS User Support Team