Unlock the Editor’s Digest totally free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
The Workplace for Nationwide Statistics has admitted it might not have the ability to change its defective labour pressure survey till 2027, leaving policymakers going through additional uncertainty over the state of the UK jobs market.
Switching to the brand new survey in mid-2025 was now unlikely, the ONS stated on Tuesday, suggesting that “aiming to finish this course of in 2027” was extra doubtless.
On the similar time, the ONS stated it was working to enhance its present survey, placing extra interviewers within the discipline and boosting the variety of responses, whereas additionally working to figuring out potential bias within the outcomes.
The ONS has been working for the previous yr to spice up the variety of respondents to the survey — the principle supply of data on the state of the UK jobs market. A plunge within the response charge compelled it first to droop LFS-based knowledge, then to badge it as “statistics in improvement”.
“The adjustments have led to some knowledge instability,” it stated, warning that “the complexity of the problems imply that it’ll take time for the affect of any enhancements to be totally realised”.
Adam Corlett, economist on the Decision Basis, stated that the company’s present survey “presents a deceptive image of UK labour market developments, and isn’t match for use for crucial selections like setting rates of interest or making fiscal projections”.
The ONS introduced the delay because it revealed that beneath its present survey the UK workforce was 484,000 larger than beforehand estimated within the second quarter of this yr, leaving productiveness correspondingly decrease.
It stated its new estimate of 33.5mn individuals in employment in April to June 2024 meant the workforce had grown because the pandemic, reasonably than barely recovering as earlier figures recommended.
With extra individuals in work, UK productiveness appears even worse than beforehand thought. The ONS stated output per hour labored in April to June was 0.9 per cent decrease than a yr earlier, reasonably than the earlier estimate of a 0.3 per cent contraction.
