Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The Office for National Statistics has admitted it may not be able to replace its faulty labour force survey until 2027, leaving policymakers facing further uncertainty over the state of the UK jobs market.
Switching to the new survey in mid-2025 was now unlikely, the ONS said on Tuesday, suggesting that “aiming to complete this process in 2027” was more likely.
At the same time, the ONS said it was working to improve its existing survey, putting more interviewers in the field and boosting the number of responses, while also working to identifying potential bias in the results, and publishing alternative sources of labour market data to help build a better picture.
The ONS has been working for the past year to boost the number of respondents to the survey — the main source of information on the state of the UK jobs market. A plunge in the response rate forced it first to suspend LFS-based data, then to badge them as “statistics in development”.
“The changes have led to some data instability,” it said, warning that “the complexity of the issues mean that it will take time for the impact of any improvements to be fully realised”.
This is a developing story.
