Lies, damned lies, and statistics: what's gone wrong at the ONS?

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The Office for National Statistics has had to delay the release of trade data due to errors in its analysis – the latest setback for the beleaguered government agency.

The delay of the trade data, announced with one day’s notice, “will fuel questions over the reliability of figures produced by the ONS”, said the Financial Times, after long-running problems with its key Labour Force Survey.

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The LFS, for example, “once a gold standard of data collection, now struggles to provide basic figures”. Whereas 10 years ago response rates to the survey were about 50%, they fell to just 17.3% in 2023 and are expected to be even lower in the past year. This “has left interest rate-setters without reliable employment data for almost 18 months”, said the FT. Some economists “think the LFS is now more likely to record people who are at home – thus overestimating the level of economic inactivity overall”, said MoneyWeek.

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The ONS has been building up a new index, the “Transformed Labour Market Survey”, to replace the LFS. But “repeated twists and tweaks mean it may not be ready to launch until 2027”, said The Guardian. Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, said the delay would rob policymakers of reliable data about the jobs market, making “some of the most consequential decisions taken by the Treasury and Bank of England challenging at best and misinformed at worst”.