UK stats office to only decide in July next year on plausibility of transition to improved labour market data
This builds on the previous story here: ONS to only lay groundwork for labour market statistical improvements in August
For some backdrop, this has been an ongoing issue for well over three years now. The issue with UK labour market data is more of the accuracy and consistency during the past few years, largely due to the falling response rate to the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
As such, the UK stats office has announced that they will be making the transition to a Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) instead. However, the timeline for this transition has been pushed back one too many a time already.
Initially, everything was supposed to be put into place by November this year. Fast forward to now, and it seems like the target transition date is now postponed to a full year later.
The ONS says that while recent improvements to the survey have been encouraging, “more time is needed to understand the full impact of the recent changes and assess what they mean for the quality of the statistics".
As such, they want to keep collecting data and analysing available information through to July 2027 before deciding on whether the TLFS is fully ready. And if so, the transition will then be made in November 2027 after.
“The next major milestone is expected in July 2027, when we plan to undertake a further full readiness assessment. If the evidence supports it, and if we and our users are ready, we will make the transition to the TLFS for our headline labour market statistics in November 2027."
The full update blog post can be found here.
In the meantime, UK labour market data will continue to have a caveat attached to it. And it has been something that the BOE has been vocal about in criticising the ONS for, as the lack of credible data makes it harder for policymakers to decide on monetary policy.
Given the ONS’ history of bottling things, I would not be the least bit surprised if this timeline for next year happens to be pushed even further come what may.
This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.