Annual Population Survey - Ability to speak Welsh by age, sex and year
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- Open Data
Title
People aged 3 or older who say they can speak Welsh, by age and sexLast update
03 July 2025Next update
To be confirmedPublishing organisation
Welsh GovernmentSource 1
Annual Population Survey, Office for National StatisticsContact email
welshlanguagedata@gov.walesLowest level of geographical disaggregation
Local authoritiesGeographical coverage
WalesLanguages covered
English and WelshData licensing
You may use and re-use this data free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government License - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licenceKeywords
Welsh speakers languageGeneral description
This dataset provides information for people aged 3 or older who say they can speak Welsh, by age and sex.Data collection and calculation
The Annual Population Survey switched from face-to-face to phone interviews in mid-March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been monitoring the impact this change has had on the survey and as a result have re-weighted the estimates accordingly. Face-to-face interviews were reintroduced in autumn 2023.By comparing people who completed the survey over the telephone with people who completed the survey face-to-face in the period before March 2020, respondents did appear to be more likely to state that they could speak Welsh when answering the survey over the telephone.
At present, it is not possible to say whether any recent changes in Welsh language ability are as a result of the change in the way the survey is conducted, or real changes in the population’s ability in Welsh. The results should therefore be interpreted with caution.
These data are taken from the Annual Population Survey (APS) datasets for 2005 onwards and the Welsh Local Labour Force Survey (WLLFS) prior to that. These surveys are carried out by the ONS. APS data are collected throughout the year and are published for calendar years. WLLFS data was published for the year ended February, each year i.e. 2001 WLLFS data relates to year ended February 2002. The data don’t exactly match annual averages derived from the four quarterly datasets in each year due to differences in the sampling structure.
The local authority and Wales figures for 2001, 2002 and 2003 in these tables may not be the same as published elsewhere, as the numbers here are estimated using Welsh specific weights. These weights better reflect the population estimates for Welsh local authorities in these years.
Nomis is the ONS's official portal for labour market statistics. Note that some estimates from Nomis for the APS may differ slightly from those presented here due to differences in how local authority geographies are constructed.
Frequency of publication
QuarterlyData reference periods
2004 to 2024Rounding applied
Figures are rounded to the nearest 100 and so there may be some apparent slight discrepancies between the sum of constituent items and the totals as shown.Revisions information
The data item has been revised since previously published in StatsWales.Statistical quality
These estimates were previously classed as accredited official statistics. The Annual Population Survey (APS) has seen a fall in sample sizes over recent years. Given this, and the fact that the survey has not been reweighted to latest population estimates, the Office for Statistics Regulation has agreed that this accreditation should be temporarily suspended and that the estimates should be re-designated as official statistics.It is still appropriate to use these statistics, however, please note the increased uncertainty around estimates derived from the APS. Estimates for smaller geographies or population sub-groups, however, are less reliable.
Users should consider trends presented in this release alongside other data on Welsh speakers, such as from the National Survey for Wales. The Welsh Government considers the census of population to be the key source of information to measure the number of Welsh speakers in Wales.
As the data come from a survey, the results are sample-based estimates and therefore subject to differing degrees of sampling variability, i.e. the true value for any measure lies in a differing range about the estimated value. This range or sampling variability increases as the detail in the data increases, for example local authority data are subject to higher variability than regional data.
