Costs experienced a £16.3m increase linked to the revamp of the survey over the last ten months.
The cost of transforming the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey (LFS) has nearly doubled in a year.
According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request published on Friday (17 January), the ONS revealed it has spent around £10.1m a year since 2021-22 to set up, develop and test the Transformed LFS, with the estimated cumulative cost reaching £40.4m across four years.
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The £10.1m accounts for around 2% of the agency's gross expenditure over the period.
However, according to a different FOI request in March 2024, the cost for the Transformed LFS was estimated to be £8m a year, reaching a total of £24.1m between the 2021-22 financial year and March 2024 – equivalent to around 1% of the ONS' gross expenditure at the time
This marks a £16.3m increase to the costs for revamping the survey in ten months.
A spokesperson for the ONS said the Transformed LFS is the "long-term solution for collecting key labour market data that cannot be obtained from other sources, such as the number of people out of work but actively seeking employment".
"Its online-first design means we can approach many more people in different ways to paint a richer picture of the UK labour market. However, as a new self-completion survey it has taken time to fully develop, to ensure we are achieving the quality necessary."
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They continued: "We recently tested a shorter version of the questionnaire aimed at further improving data quality. We will provide an update on next steps in the spring."
The LFS came under fire last year after, in October 2023, the agency was forced to suspend its labour force estimates due to falling response rates which, in turn, raised quality concerns.
Both the Treasury Committee and Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill criticised the ONS over the validity of the survey and the unreliability of its data.
