National Statistical

Over the last year the ONS has been focusing resources on its headline economic statistics and progressing improvements, particularly on our complex labour market data. In line with our commitment to transparency at the earliest opportunity, James Benford updates on an operational issue which will temporarily impact data quality for the labour force survey from next month. James describes the immediate action taken and work in train on a wider lessons-learned exercise to ensure we both correct course and act to strengthen our operations to further progress the recovery of our statistics. 

There has been a lot of focus recently on labour productivity, which looks at how much is produced for each hour worked across the economy. Richard Heys explains the different measures the ONS calculates as well as which gives the best indication of recent changes in the UK economy.