Providing the best picture of international migration

Categories: Coronavirus, migration, ONS, Population

The Office for National Statistics has been transforming its international migration statistics using a range of new and existing data sources. Better use of data held across government will underpin the future of the UK’s migration statistics. Jay Lindop explains why the latest estimates will be the last to use the International Passenger Survey and why today’s figures reinforce the need to progress the move to a new system.

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What’s happened to crime during the pandemic? How ONS has responded to the measurement challenge

Categories: Coronavirus, Crime, Data, Office for National Statistics, ONS

Early data from police forces suggest crimes recorded in England and Wales have fallen since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.  For a wider overall picture of crime most users tend to look to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.   But the suspension of face-to-face interviewing has forced the ONS to modify this large household survey. In this post Billy Gazard explains what’s changed and what you need to be aware of in interpreting our next set of crime statistics.

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Public services: measuring the part they play in the economy through the pandemic

Categories: Coronavirus, Data, Economy

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has clearly hit the economy of all countries very hard, with big falls in GDP across the world. The UK has seen the output of its public services, such as health and education, hit harder than many other countries. Here Rob Kent Smith explains how we measure the contribution of these important services and why we’ve seen such big declines.  

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Getting the price right: how we have developed new price measures to show how the pandemic has affected inflation

Categories: Coronavirus, Data, Economy, ONS

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic threw up a number of challenges, including how to measure consumer price inflation. Some people asked what inflation would look like if we rebalanced the figures to take account of the different household spending patterns that lockdown brought on. Here Mike Hardie writes about how we have produced these new, rebalanced numbers and what they show.

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