National Statistical

Improved surveys and statistics delivering new insights on the UK economy 

Today we are publishing the latest quarterly update on our Surveys and Economic Statistics Improvement Plan. James Benford looks back at some of the important improvements delivered in the last quarter, reviews performance and sets out plans for the coming months.  

Moving to a new phase: from recovery to improvement 

The recovery in surveys and economic statistics is moving to a new phase, from recovery to improvement. The Labour Force Survey is now back on track after the issue affecting telephone interviews in May and June, supported by a larger interviewer field community. Achieved responses for our digitised business surveys are reaching historic highs. Improved methods for the national accounts and labour market statistics are delivering new insights about the UK economy. This is giving us a better understanding of the services sector, public sector balance sheets and productivity. It is helping our statistics keep pace with the growing importance of AI and digital infrastructure.  

Our key performance indicators point to further encouraging signs on quality and delivery. There have been no higher-impact corrections since January 2026, the six-month rolling correction rate is around half its level at the start of the year, and all Tier 1 economic statistics publications have been delivered to schedule.  We have maintained that performance despite a run of systems and data supply issues and have actions in train to learn from these issues and strengthen processes further.  Luke Ashton, our new Director General for Digital and Data, is rapidly coalescing the Office around a new target technology architecture and a plan for legacy.  We will have more to say about what that means for surveys and economic statistics in the new year.  We continue to work with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) towards reaccreditation of Producer Price Indices and UK Trade statistics.   

Recent feedback from the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and OSR has recognised the progress being made, emphasising the importance of transparency, quality and sustained delivery. The OSR has welcomed the clearer and more disciplined approach to managing surveys and economic statistics and has moved from quarterly to annual progress assessments. 

Improved survey performance, including by learning when things go wrong 

We have prioritised recovery of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) following the operational issue in May, which temporarily reduced the number of achieved telephone interviews. Performance has since recovered to levels seen during the equivalent period last year. We have set out the actions we are implementing from our lessons learned review, which are strengthening operational controls broadly. Learning transparently when things go wrong is vital to improving surveys and economic statistics and trust in them.  

Our social surveys field community has reached its minimum target for the first time since this Improvement Plan began and is set to increase further. This will continue to support the LFS and Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), while providing additional capacity for the Living Costs and Food Survey and the Wealth and Assets Survey later this year. 

The performance of the TLFS has continued to improve following the changes introduced in April, with a further increase in the achieved sample from July as more survey cohorts experienced those changes. We continue to progress work to test our innovative approach to determining occupation and industry codes and to integrate plans for transformed labour force surveys across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  We will publish our next update on the TLFS in November. 

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings has achieved its largest sample on record following the move to digital-by-default collection, strengthening one of our most important sources of information on earnings and pay. We will publish the results of that survey on 22 October, so they are available to inform decisions on the minimum wage in the upcoming Autumn Budget. 

New insights on the economy and improved coherence across sources  

Exploratory research using linked HM Revenue & Customs Pay As You Earn (PAYE) data has also provided new insights into labour market trends, helping to explain periods of divergence between survey and administrative measures. It showed a stronger recovery in employment after the pandemic and a smaller and less prolonged rise in economic inactivity than suggested by the published LFS estimates alone. The research also suggested that recovery in the LFS during 2024 and 2025 may have reduced non-response bias, as using the linked payroll data made only a small difference to the level of employment and inactivity estimates in 2025. The next phase will examine how we can incorporate administrative data on self-employment.    

Our new component approach to measuring labour productivity, combining multiple data sources and international best practice has helped to explain a significant part of the “productivity puzzle”. While the data still point to a slowdown in UK productivity following the financial crisis, the new method changes our understanding of the slowdown in output per worker after the crisis, with a larger role for falling average hours worked and a smaller role for slower growth in output per hour. The new data make more sense. We will incorporate the new methods into headline productivity estimates in November and bring in regional and industrial breakdowns early next year. 

Keeping pace with change in the economy, including artificial intelligence  

We have recently published new GDP data in line with the 2026 Blue Book. Richer information from the Annual Survey of Goods and Services has improved our measurement of the services sector, revealing a larger service sector with more secondary production of goods and increasing the estimated level of nominal GDP in 2024 by 0.5%.  

Updated estimates of public sector pension liabilities strengthen measurement of Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities, giving users a more complete picture of the public sector balance sheet. 

Alongside this, we have published new analysis of data centres and digital infrastructure investment, including an improved measure showing strong investment during 2024 and 2025. We have also set out a framework for a UK AI Thematic Account, supported by an analysis of more than 5,800 UK companies specialising in AI. Together, this work is helping ensure our statistics keep pace with an economy increasingly shaped by AI and digital infrastructure.  In December, we will publish our first estimates of UK investment in data as an asset, a foundational part of the AI ecosystem. 

Next steps 

Over the next quarter, we will continue to deliver improvements for our users.  I have already highlighted some forthcoming work on the labour market, productivity and the national accounts. In addition, in November, we expect to publish the first experimental statistics from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (LEED). These statistics will show how workers move between and within firms over time, and how these patterns vary by workers’ age and by the size and industry of their employers, providing new insights about how the UK labour market is changing.   

We are also working to deliver new measures of underlying movements in GDP and of monthly consumer price inflation, drawing on best practice at other national statistics institutes.   

The Statistical Business Register remains on track to deliver its first transition state by the end of this year, reducing reliance on legacy systems for a substantial group of users and providing a platform to explore the composition of the economy using the new Standard Industry Classification codes that we finalised earlier this year. In time it will greatly improve our coverage of micro-businesses by expanding the register from around 3 million to around 5.5 million firms.     

Significant challenges remain. Running the LFS and TLFS in parallel into 2027 will increase costs next financial year. We are managing these pressures by slowing recruitment outside our priority field interviewer community over the next six months and launching new productivity and savings initiatives. To protect improvements to critical statistics we will need to be disciplined in taking on new work until we make the evidence-led transition to the TLFS. We remain on track to deliver that transition in 2027 in line with the plans we set out in August. We are engaging closely and transparently with users and the UKSA board to ensure the transition works for them. 

To conclude, we are building a statistical system that is reliable, capable of keeping pace with a changing economy and is responsive to user needs.  That means delivering a safe transition to the TLFS, progressing the Statistical Business Register, delivering priority improvements to critical surveys and economic statistics and implementing new international statistical standards in a way that accounts for the growing AI and digital economy. 

User feedback remains central to our work. If you have comments, particularly if there are things you would like us to do differently, please feel free to contact me personally on econstatsplan@ons.gov.uk. We are also currently running a consultation on the release times for market-sensitive economic statistics and whether the current arrangements continue to best serve the public good. The consultation closes on 30 October. Please do feed in your views. Feedback received will help inform coming decisions on the release of these important statistics.