tidylfs

Installation

You can install the development version of tidylfs from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("wklimowicz/tidylfs")

Quickstart

Copy the LFS .sav files into a directory (in my example lfs_data_folder). They should look like this (the naming convention is important since that’s how the package knows which quarter and year the data is from):

.
└── lfs_data_folder/
    ├── 1992 Q1.sav
    ├── 1992 Q2.sav
    ├── ...
    └── 2020 Q2.sav

You can then run:

library(tidylfs)

# Converts `.sav` files to `.Rds` files, to save
# space and for quicker loading
lfs_convert(
  directory = "lfs_data_folder/",
  output_directory = "lfs_rds_folder/"
)

# Compiles into one file.
lfs <- lfs_compile(directory = "lfs_rds_folder/")

To view the variable mapping use variable_mapping():

variable_mapping(lfs)

Code to reproduce some official ONS publications is in the vignette("stats-replication"). For more information on the ONS variables, see the LFS Guidance.

A core set of variables is included by default. See R/mappings.R for the complete set. To add more variables see vignette("adding-variables").

Variable Name	Definition
YEAR	Year
QUARTER	Quarter
SEX	Sex
GOVTOR	Government Office Region
AGE	Age
ETHNICITY	Ethnicity
FTPTWK	Part-Time/Full-time Status
EDAGE	Age when completed full time education
TTACHR	Actual hours worked
HIQUALD	Highest Qualification
DEGREE_SUBJECT	Degree Subject
OCCUPATION	Occupation in main job
PARENTAL_OCCUPATION	Parental Occupation at 14