GeraJobs / UK Apprenticeship Demand Index / Methodology
Gera Apprenticeship Demand Index — Methodology
How the GADI is computed, where the data comes from, and what the Open Government Licence means for reuse.
1. What the index measures
The Gera Apprenticeship Demand Index (GADI) measures how densely apprenticeships are distributed across the employed workforce in each English region and sector — not just raw start counts. A region with more jobs is expected to have more starts; the GADI normalises for this so regions of very different sizes can be compared fairly.
A GADI of 100 = England average. 140 = 40% more apprenticeship starts per worker than average. 48 = roughly half the national density.
2. Data sources
(A) DfE Apprenticeships and Traineeships 2022/23
Source: Department for Education — Apprenticeships and Traineeships 2022/23
File used: app-geography-detailed-202223-q4.csv (inside the release ZIP download)
Period: 2022/23 academic year (August 2022 – July 2023) (full academic year)
Rows used: Regional level × SSA Tier 1 × sex = Total × ethnicity = Total × apprenticeship level = Total. This gives one starts count per region × sector combination, with no demographic or level filtering applied.
National total: England total starts = 336,550 (from app-subject-summary-202223-q4.csv,std_fwk_flag = Total row — the published DfE headline figure).
(B) ONS Workforce Jobs by Region and Industry (JOBS05)
Source: ONS Workforce Jobs by Region and Industry (JOBS05)
Period used: June 2023 quarterly estimate — the closest published ONS quarter to the midpoint of the 2022/23 academic year.
Measure: Total workforce jobs (column labelled “Total”) per English NUTS1 region, in thousands. 9 English regions covered; Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland excluded.
England total: 26.47m workforce jobs (sum of 9 regional JOBS05 figures).
3. Formula
Step 1. Compute the England baseline rate:
= 12.71 starts per 1,000 employed
Step 2. Compute each region’s rate:
Step 3. Index to England = 100:
The calculation is deterministic and reproducible from the published source files. No modelling, interpolation, or estimation is used. DfE-suppressed cells (“low”, typically <10 starts) are labelled as insufficient data and excluded from sector-level GADI calculations.
4. Licence and reuse
Both source datasets are published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL v3), meaning the underlying data may be freely used, adapted, and redistributed provided the source is acknowledged and the licence terms are met. GeraJobs acknowledges Crown Copyright and the relevant data publishers (DfE and ONS) on every page that uses this data.
The Gera Apprenticeship Demand Index formula and implementation are GeraJobs’ own work. The index name and methodology are proprietary to GeraJobs but the underlying data is Crown Copyright.
5. Update cadence
DfE publishes the Apprenticeships and Traineeships release annually (typically November, covering the previous academic year). GeraJobs re-computes the GADI each year when DfE publishes new data. The JOBS05 workforce jobs figure is updated to the June quarter matching the new DfE academic year.
Last updated: 2026-06-20. Next update: when DfE publishes 2023/24 data.