If, and when, there is another pandemic, being prepared is the best way to ensure the right response is taken….
Read more on Working across four continents to prepare ourselves for another pandemic
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.
Read more on Using the power of linked data to understand factors preventing people from working
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.
Read more on Behaviour shifts and the implications for migration statistics
Good data played a key part in informing the UK response to the Coronavirus pandemic. But what lessons can be learned and how can we best prepare not only ourselves, but the rest of the world if, and when, another pandemic hits? Emma Rourke explains how a global collaboration, led by the UK’s Office for National Statistics and funded by Wellcome, is growing to create the Pandemic Preparedness Toolkit which could make a valuable contribution to the next global pandemic response.
Read more on Preparing for another global pandemic
One of our key roles as statisticians is to paint a picture of society according to how people describe themselves. Our responsibility is to keep pace with how society defines itself and to make our statistics available as promptly as possible. Data from Census 2021 are so rich and complex that the publication of the first results is far from the end of our work. Sometimes we can unearth unexpected patterns as we undertake further analysis and gather feedback from users about their findings. Emma Rourke explains what we know about census gender identity data so far.
Read more on Census 2021 gender identity estimates: progress and next steps