The ONS’s new Director-General for Surveys and Economic and Social Statistics, James Benford, talks through work going on beyond the scenes to improve our statistics after a week with several major releases on the UK economy.
Read more on Lifting the lid on our work to improve labour market 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.
Read more on GDP: Getting the best insight each month
Today, the ONS has published updated statistics on suicides among higher education students using improved methods to provide more accurate information. In this blog David Mais summarises these changes and the steps we have taken to assure their quality.
Read more on Providing a better understanding of suicides among higher education students
Under new senior leadership the ONS is urgently focusing its resources on core economic statistics as part of a wider strategic recovery plan. In this post, incoming Director General for economic social and environmental statistics James Benford says the recent postponement and correction of the retail sales figures underlines the need for the Office to prioritise and put more resources behind work to improve economic statistics and to bring more transparency on how these plans are progressing.
Read more on Correcting the record on retail sales, improving quality across economic statistics
Gross Domestic Product – better known as ‘GDP’ – often makes the news, but behind the headlines are stories about industries, regions and communities. In our next Bringing Data to Life webinar, taking place on Monday 8 September from 4pm to 5pm, we’ll explore what GDP is, how it’s measured, and what it can tell us about the economy.
Read more on Growth by numbers: an introduction to GDP