ONS

Understanding harassment: Filling the evidence gap

An image of people walking down a street

For the first time the ONS has published analysis of harassment using data from new questions on the Crime Survey for England and Wales. These invaluable insights show one in ten people aged 16 and over had experienced a form of harassment in the previous 12 months, with the findings particularly striking for younger women and men. Catherine Grant explains how today’s work is an important first step in improving the understanding of experience of harassment and how the survey will provide more granular insights as time goes on.

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Using the power of linked data to understand factors preventing people from working

Crowds of people walking through a busy street

Nearly 9 million working-age people in the UK were not working or looking for work – that is, economically inactive – from May to July 2023. This figure includes more than 2.5 million people inactive due to long-term sickness, an increase of half-a-million people since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma Rourke explains how linked, population-level data can improve our understanding of the interplay between health and work, with the goal of improving the wellbeing of individuals and the economy.

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How the ONS values the natural world

As well as measuring changes to our society and economy, the Office for National Statistics has also been radically improving its measurement of what the natural world provides to us as part of its Beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) agenda. Today we published improved estimates of our UK Natural Capital Accounts. Tristan Pett and Harry Davies write about how these figures are put together and what they show about our changing environment. 

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Behaviour shifts and the implications for migration statistics

Image of departures and arrivals sign at Heathrow

Net migration to the UK has been running at record levels. Driven by a rise in people coming for work, increasing numbers of students and world events, the patterns of migration have changed with more arrivals from outside of the EU than in the previous decade. Emma Rourke explains how the ONS is interpreting these behavioural changes, how they feed into the latest data and the implications for other population statistics. 

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