Maritime Skills Commission - Labour Market Intelligence Scoping Report - August 2020

Labour Market Intelligence Report - 30
Here we focus solely on the Maritime Sector on a holistic
basis; a full description of how the direct, aggregate and
regional economic impacts of each industry has been
measured can be found in Cebr’s separate reports for
each industry.
Quantifying the direct economic impacts of the Maritime
Sector and data sources
The first stage of the study, discussed in more detail in
Cebr’s separate reports on the shipping, ports, leisure
marine, marine engineering and scientific and Maritime
Business Services industries, has involved mapping the
activities of each industry against the National Accounts
framework, in order to establish clarity on the precise
definition of activities as they map against the Standard
Industrial Classification (SIC) framework.
In essence therefore, this involves taking each of the
sector’s and industry’s activities, and mapping these to the
most relevant Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code
in order to identify the activity’s economic data. It is clear
from Cebr’s analysis that the majority of activities do map
neatly onto the National Accounts framework. As a result,
Cebr have been able to exploit company financials data
in addition to publicly-available data sources such as the
Annual Business Survey to gather data for some constituent
activities of the sector. Cebr has therefore drawn upon a
combination of publicly-available data, desk research and
industry data to quantify the economic contribution from the
Maritime Sector.
In order to quantify the direct economic impacts of the
Maritime Sector, a number of different approaches have
been taken which reflect the degree of alignment (or
otherwise) for each activity against the National Accounts
framework. They are as follows:
The major source of data used to quantify the direct
economic contribution of the Maritime Sector is the
Financial Accounts Made Easy (FAME) database, which
provides business demography and financial accounts
data for companies operating in the UK Maritime
Sector. The FAME database has been used to generate
estimates for the business turnover, GVA, employment,
the compensation of employees and profitability of the
shipping industry.
For those industries and constituent activities which do
not map neatly against the national accounts framework,
a combination of industry sources (such as the British
Marine Key Performance Indicators) and publiclyavailable
data sources have been used to generate direct
economic impact estimates.
As FAME does not provide data on exports of goods and
services, data have instead been sourced from both the
ONS Pink Book or industry sources such as the UK
Chamber of Shipping’s (UKCoS) Annual Sea Inquiry. In
some instance the ONS Supply Use Tables have been
used to generate estimates.
Data for the direct economic contribution of each
industry have by extension been then used to quantify
the contribution that the Maritime Sector makes to the
UK Exchequer, and the productivity of the sector in terms
of GVA per job.
Again, a more detailed description of sources used for
each industry and their constituent activities can be found
in Cebr’s separate industry reports, which quantify the
economic contribution of each industry.
5.4 In discussion, CEBR explained that they had to
do a good deal to supplement and complement
the data available through the Standard Industrial
Classification (SIC) codes; the result is, in their
words, “highly bespoke”.
5.5 Two examples illustrate that tailoring:
Cebr sense-checked their emerging conclusions
with sector insiders at different stages,
typically exploring whether individual companies