Using the power of linked data to understand factors preventing people from working

Categories: Coronavirus, Disability, Economy, Health, Office for National Statistics, Office for Statistics Regulation, ONS, Population, UK Statistics Authority, Wellbeing
Crowds of people walking through a busy street

Nearly 9 million working-age people in the UK were not working or looking for work – that is, economically inactive – from May to July 2023. This figure includes more than 2.5 million people inactive due to long-term sickness, an increase of half-a-million people since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma Rourke explains how linked, population-level data can improve our understanding of the interplay between health and work, with the goal of improving the wellbeing of individuals and the economy.

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How the ONS values the natural world

Categories: ONS

As well as measuring changes to our society and economy, the Office for National Statistics has also been radically improving its measurement of what the natural world provides to us as part of its Beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) agenda. Today we published improved estimates of our UK Natural Capital Accounts. Tristan Pett and Harry Davies write about how these figures are put together and what they show about our changing environment. 

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Behaviour shifts and the implications for migration statistics

Categories: migration, ONS, Population
Image of departures and arrivals sign at Heathrow

Net migration to the UK has been running at record levels. Driven by a rise in people coming for work, increasing numbers of students and world events, the patterns of migration have changed with more arrivals from outside of the EU than in the previous decade. Emma Rourke explains how the ONS is interpreting these behavioural changes, how they feed into the latest data and the implications for other population statistics. 

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