Wrapping up ‘Black Friday’: How the ONS captures the effect of a major shopping trend

Categories: ONS

It’s an American import that in just a few years has changed our traditional shopping habits in the pre-Christmas period. Now it looks like ‘Black Friday’ is here to stay.  Rhian Murphy explains how the ONS takes account of the impact of ‘Black Friday’ when compiling the UK’s most comprehensive and influential retail statistics.

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No half measures: using tax data to monitor jobs and pay better

Categories: ONS

Access to new sources of data is helping the ONS to produce quicker and more detailed economic indicators. Now, working with HM Revenue and Customs, we have for the first time jointly published estimates of employees and earnings based on monthly real-time tax information. David Freeman explains what these new data give us and how they fit into the ongoing transformation of UK economics statistics.

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Hiding in plain sight? Why economically inactive people aren’t in ‘hidden unemployment’

Categories: Economy, ONS

You’re either classed as employed or unemployed, right? Well, wrong, actually – there are three different possible ways people can be classified in the labour market. Here David Freeman looks at the third status, called ‘economic inactivity’ and explains how ONS statistics fully capture people’s involvement, or lack of it, with the world of work and why economically inactive people aren’t just in ‘hidden unemployment’.

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