Internet use continues to expand

An article from the BBC News Website confirms: "the average Briton is not only using the net more they are going online faster than they used to."

In addition to this Britons continue to use more of all forms, new and less recent, of mobile technology.

Some other quick statistics:

- In 2002 the average Briton used the net for six minutes a day - now that has hit 24 minutes.
- Mobile use has doubled from five to 10 minutes per day.
- In 2002 barely 4 per cent of households had broadband but five years later the figure stands at 58 per cent.

For more facts and figures see Communication nation - facts and figures.

Please fill in a questionnaire on employee uses for the Internet.

Some social networking statistics

Until a just a year ago it was the blog that seemed to be commanding a great deal of statistical Internet based research.

The year 2007, however, appears to be the year in which interest in social networking websites appear to have surpassed previous attention vested in rise of blogs and blogging circa 2004 to 2007.

An example of research into the rapid up-take of social networking sites is provided by Comscore (see figure for more details - visit my blog if you are reading this posting in any other form).

Details summarised by Comscore include the following:

- The European social networking community stood at 127.3 million unique visitors in August – reaching 56 per cent of the European online population.

- U.K. participation in social networking usage proved to be the highest in Europe, with 24.9 million unique visitors – 78 percent of the total U.K. online population – now belonging to the country’s social networking community.

- Usage of social networking sites in the U.K. proved heavier than the European average in terms of hours spent, pages viewed, and the number of visits per month.

- The average visitor to social networking sites in the U.K. spent 5.8 hours per month on those sites in August and made 23.3 visits.

- This was a significantly heavier usage level than in France, which averaged 2 hours per month and 16.8 visits per visitor, or Germany, with 3.1 hours per month and 13.8 visits per visitor.

For more details see U.K. Social Networking Site Usage Highest in Europe.

New statistics on Web use in Europe

The other day I came across some quite interesting and revealing statistics on Internet use across the Europe.

In brief, the statistics suggest that Internet use and application is evolving all the time and it is Web 2.0 technology fuelling the latest trends.

The following statistics appear to confirm my opinion:

· 169 million people now online across 10 European markets
· Internet use stretches ahead of TV amongst youth audience
· Uplift in online driven by rising use amongst silver surfers and digital women
· Internet users on average spending nearly 12 hours per week online and nearly a third (29 per cent) spending upwards of 16 hours online
. Internet users access the internet 5.5 days per week
· Social networking sites now visited by 42 per cent of internet users
· 8 out of 10 Europeans connect to the internet via a broadband connection

It seems clear that the Internet is the new television, expect that nobody just watches the Internet.

For more details (and there are far more than I cover here) see - Shifting traditions: Internet rivalling TV in media consumption stakes (EIAA).

Employment tribunals up again

The news that the number of cases brought to employment tribunals rose by 15 per cent in the year 2006 to 2006 appeared in the news last month, but due to a busy time at work, I never got to mention it on my blog.

The latest statistics for British Employment Tribunals is likely to interest many people from many disciplinary backgrounds.

My interests stems from studying conflict in the workplace and the fact that I teach stuff on industrial conflict to undergraduate students.

Therefore my take on Employment Tribunals is to suggest that declining employee interest in trade unions is not necessarily matched by a decline in employee grievances against employers.

Here are some statistics from the report (link above) that you may find interesting:

Many Employment Tribunal cases involved more than one jurisdiction (complaint).

Of the 238,546 jurisdictions lodged in total:

- 972 were age discrimination claims
- 44,013 were equal pay claims
- 44,491 claims were for unfair dismissal
-28,153 were for sex discrimination (a large number of these were in conjunction with equal pay claims)
- 3,780 were for race discrimination
- 5,533 were for disability discrimination

With the exception of race discrimination, all claims had an upward trend, with equal pay claims showing a 155 per cent increase on 2005-06.

Also see Tribunals Service findings show employment tribunals rose by 15% in 2006-07 (Mike Berrry, Personnel Today) for some further brief commentary on the statistics.

Strikes up sharply on previous year

The ONS has just released the latest strike statistics.

Primary analysis suggests a sharp increase on the previous year, yet the higher levels are consistent with long-term low-levels of strike activity.

"The 2006 total of 754,500 working days lost through labour disputes is significantly higher than the 2005 (157,400) total.

The 2006 total is also higher than the average number of working days lost per year in the 1990s (660,000) but lower than the average for both the 1980s (7.2 million) and the 1970s (12.9 million).

The 158 stoppages total in 2006 is higher than the 2005 and 2004 totals of 116 and 130, respectively.

There were three stoppages beginning in 2005 which continued into 2006.

The number of stoppages has fallen sharply since the 1980s, when the average annual number was 1,129.

The average number in the 1990s was 273.

There were 713,300 workers involved in labour disputes during 2006; this compares with 92,600 in 2005.

The number of workers involved is higher than average number involved in the 1990s (201,600) but below the average in the 1980s (1,040,300)."

State of the unions

The DTI has just released the latest statistics for trade union membership in the UK (2006).

The report is called Trade Union Membership 2006 by Heidi Granger and Martin Crowther.

Key findings include:

- Union density fell 0.6 per cent in the year 2005-2006

- Union density for all employed currently stands at 25.8 per cent
- For the third year in succession women represent the greater proportion of overall membership
- Northern Ireland has the highest union density (39.7 per cent); England the lowest at 27 per cent
- Within England density varies between 21.4 per cent in the South East compared to 38.9 per cent in the North East
- Only one in six private sector workers are in a union; collective agreements in this sector now cover less than 20 per cent of all employees
- 58.8 per cent of all public sector employees are in a union; collective agreements in this sector cover 69 per cent of all employees [not sure if this includes or excludes pay review bodies]
- Hourly earnings for union members is currently £12.43 per hour compared to £10.66 for non-union workers.

The TUC response of "running hard to stand still" can be found here.

Blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007

According to a report by technology analysts Gartner, during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million.

Further insights from a report they compiled also suggests:

- 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs

- most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so

I'm not sure what the significance of the report is because the it's surely the quality of blogs and not the quantity that matters. A BBC News article summarises the report here.

More interestingly, however, is a BBC "have your say" on the findings about blogging.

Blogosphere continues to grow

According to the latest blogging statistics from Technorati, there appears to be little sign that the blogging phenomenon is beginning to wane.

Some statistics include:

1) Every day 100,000 new blogs are created
2) 1.3 million posts are made per day
3) There has also been an increase in the number of blogs being written in the Farsi language
4) Technorati tracks more than 57 million blogs, of which it believes around 55 per cent are 'active' - updated at least every three months
5) Technorati suggest there are around 4,000 elite blogs - have more than 500 blogs linking to them.

See Blogosphere sees healthy growth (BBC News: Technology) for more details and click here for the report itself.