Economy

Trade off: different ways of measuring imports and exports

Categories: Data, Economy, ONS
Image shows a shipping container being craned off a container lorry, indicative of trade

In the post-Brexit period, official trade statistics are being scrutinised as never before.  It’s been noted that the UK figures from the ONS appear to tell a different story from those released by Eurostat, the EU’s own statistical agency. In this post Matt Hughes examines those discrepancies and explains why they don’t mean one side is necessarily wrong.    

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Painting the full picture: what our statistics tell us about the labour market

Categories: Data, Economy, ONS
Picture of person job hunting on a laptop

On Monday we published a short blog on the linkages between the labour market statistics and estimates of population here. But there has also been interest in how our statistics describing the labour market fit together.  Here Debra Leaker looks at the different figures the ONS publishes and the picture they paint.   

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Nice one CHAPS: how Bank of England card data are telling us more about consumer spending

Categories: Coronavirus, Data, Economy, ONS

The pandemic has had such an impact on our everyday lives – movement restrictions, store closures, panic buying and people occupying more time at home have all influenced our spending patterns and consumer behaviour. David Matthewson explains how, for the first time, the ONS will publish credit and debit card transaction data from the Bank of England that will give us more detailed information on how we have been spending our money over the last twelve months.  

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