ONS reports progress on labour force data collection but warns of more instability in estimates ahead

Amid Treasury and BoE concerns

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has bolstered the response rate to its Labour Force Survey (LFS) amid concerns about the UK's ability to set monetary and fiscal policy due to unreliable data on the labour market.

In an update today (3 December), the ONS stated that its sample size of individual responses had reached 42,398 from July to September 2024, up from 29,220 for the same period last year. UK's national statistics agency added it expects the dataset to further increase in size in coming periods but warned of "more instability in LFS estimates" since "the changes take time to progress through waves of data collection into outputs". Last month, Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury Committee, wrote a public letter to the UK Statistics Authority raising concerns about the accuracy of the ONS ...