National Statistical

Understanding what is happening in the labour market has become more challenging as different data sources have provided different signals about how the labour market is evolving. Today we are publishing early findings from research, which explores whether Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI) administrative data can help us better understand potential non-response bias in the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The findings provide important new evidence, but further work is needed before we can assess whether and how these methods should be used in official statistics.  

Today the ONS has published the latest data and insights from its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), which provides a huge amount of detail about the wages of employees in the UK. Liz McKeown takes a look at the latest data, explores how they compare with other data sources on earnings and outlines the steps we are taking to improve these important statistics. 

Monthly GDP, first introduced in 2018, is a closely followed statistic, showing changes in the size of the UK economy around 40 days after the end of a month. However, it has been questioned whether focusing on such short-term movements risks placing too much weight on a relatively noisy signal about the state of the economy. Liz McKeown sets out how, to help address this, we are changing our presentation of GDP to lead with changes across three-month periods. 

Today the ONS has published its latest annual estimates of employee earnings in the UK. Recognising recent challenges with the data, we have introduced new methods and processing improvements this year, which have resulted in some bigger revisions than usual. Liz McKeown explains the impact of the changes and looks ahead to further improvements in the quality of the data.