Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether current Census and labour market statistics adequately capture employment in freelance and portfolio-based sectors, including crafts and the visual arts; and what discussions they have had with the Office for National Statistics about this issue.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS) capture everybody who is in work, with further detail about the type of work and contractual arrangements, which allow better understanding of different employment circumstances such as freelancing. The LFS and APS use the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007 and Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020 frameworks for capturing the industry and occupation of responders. These aim to be comprehensive and for everyone who is in work to allocate the respondent an occupation, which will include those in crafts and visual arts, and an industry, such as "creative, arts and entertainment activities". In terms of the adequacy of the statistics themselves, the estimates available for those occupations on LFS/APS depends on having sufficient levels of response and any measures of accuracy calculated for estimates generated by users.

However, we recognise that the current definition of crafts using SIC2007 does not fully capture the crafts sector and does not adequately meet all of our stakeholder needs. As part of the ONS revision of the UK SIC framework, we have worked with stakeholders and the ONS to improve the way that DCMS sectors, including crafts and visual arts, are classified. As a result of this work, the updated proposed SIC2026 framework published by the ONS in February 2026 includes a new SIC code for “Physical three dimensional visual arts and craft creation activities” which will improve the identification of the crafts sector. The final framework will be published by the ONS on 31 March.

As part of the DCMS Sector Economic Estimates series, DCMS publishes official statistics on the number of self-employed jobs in DCMS sectors, including crafts and visual arts, which form part of the creative industries. These statistics are based on ONS data from the LFS and APS.

We have engaged with the ONS to understand the impact of reduced sample sizes of the LFS and APS on the quality of ONS labour market data and, in turn, the impact on the quality of our DCMS employment estimates.