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The Workplace for Nationwide Statistics has admitted it might not have the ability to substitute its defective labour power 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 mentioned on Tuesday, suggesting that “aiming to finish this course of in 2027” was extra possible.
On the identical time, the ONS mentioned it was working to enhance its current 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 12 months to spice up the variety of respondents to the survey — the primary supply of knowledge on the state of the UK jobs market. A plunge within the response charge pressured it first to droop LFS-based information, then to badge it as “statistics in improvement”.
“The adjustments have led to some information instability,” it mentioned, warning that “the complexity of the problems imply that it’ll take time for the impression of any enhancements to be totally realised”.
Adam Corlett, economist on the Decision Basis, mentioned that the company’s current survey “presents a deceptive image of UK labour market tendencies, and isn’t match for use for essential selections like setting rates of interest or making fiscal projections”.
The ONS introduced the delay because it revealed that below its current survey the UK workforce was 484,000 larger than beforehand estimated within the second quarter of this 12 months, leaving productiveness correspondingly decrease.
It mentioned its new estimate of 33.5mn folks in employment in April to June 2024 meant the workforce had grown for the reason that pandemic, slightly than barely recovering as earlier figures steered.
With extra folks in work, UK productiveness appears to be like even worse than beforehand thought. The ONS mentioned output per hour labored in April to June was 0.9 per cent decrease than a 12 months earlier, slightly than the earlier estimate of a 0.3 per cent contraction.
