Economy

How the ONS is working towards measuring depletion of UK natural capital

As well as its more traditional social and economic statistics, the Office for National Statistics has been further improving its measurement of what the natural world provides to us through ‘ecosystem services’. This work is part of the wider ‘Wellbeing and Beyond GDP’ agenda to provide a complementary and more holistic view of national prosperity and well-being. In this post Ellen Clowser looks at how we’ve been extending our measurement of natural capital to estimate for the first time how these resources are being depleted.

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How the ONS is transforming its statistics for local areas

Innovation Picture

The ONS produces a huge amount of high-quality data covering the economy, environment, crime and immigration. Over the last few years, we’ve also been focusing our efforts on producing much more granular estimates so we can measure how our society and economy is changing at the local level. Emma Hickman writes about how this work is progressing and what insights we’ve produced. 

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A voice for UK businesses – a milestone for our business insights survey

Image of a person inputting data

Back in March 2020, life changed very suddenly as COVID-19 struck. In the first days of lockdown the ONS set up what it thought would be a temporary rapid business survey to assess how the pandemic was impacting UK businesses. Gemma Rabaiotti explains how four years and 100 waves of responses later, the Business Impact of Coronavirus survey– now renamed the Business Insights and Conditions survey – (BICS) has cemented its place as a timely and vital voice on the challenges facing businesses today.

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PODCAST: Year in Review 2023

It has been a radical and transformative 2023 for the Office for National Statistics, with work underway to future-proof its figures in a number of its outputs. National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, joins podcast host Miles Fletcher for the latest episode of Statistically Speaking, to look back over the past 12 months and discuss why change was needed. 

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

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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