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The main questions with the UK employment data have warned the attention of the head of the Statistics Agency after the sample size for one assessment “demolished to only five individuals”, according to the E -Mail, received by the Financial Times.
Richard Heys, Deputy Main Economist on National Statistics Officehe warned in an email in October 2023 that there was “little and falling merit” in maintaining a long-term study of the Agency’s Workpiece (LFS), adding that the data point for one industry “moved”[d] for 30%”due to the collapse of the sample size.
E -Mail’s higher figures on ONS, published in response to a request for freedom of information FT, followed on the eve of the briefing for the head of ons, Sir Ian Diamond October 2023, shortly before the agency Withdrawn publishing key market statistics With only one day notification.
Diamond said The Treasury Choosy Committee of the House of House last month that the briefing of October 17, 2023 was the first time he became aware of the fragility and unreliability of the survey, which supports the critical economic statistics in the UK, such as the unemployment rate.
In E -Poruti 2023, Heys said that a new research in the development of ONS -“transformed” labor research (TLFS) -“presented some challenging data”, but still advised that the existing LFs were discharged.
“There is also a little falling credit for holding LFS, and the key point is not when Tlfs is perfect, this is when it is obviously superior to LFS,” Heys wrote on October 12, 2023.
“As someone who has just seen that one of their statistics is 30% because the size of a sample for the industry in the LFS study collapsed to only five people.. I think we are probably already there from my perspective,” he added.
The E -Af is not stated what the data were influenced by, but he indicated that Heys was talking about one of the detailed industry statistics that was published together with the numbers of unemployed titles.
Heys also described how Officers at ONS need to present problems for the diamond. “We need to be careful to sound positive, but not Panlossian. The quality of data and feedback of stakeholders are non-trivial problems that hit the SID [Sir Ian Diamond] with and it is important that we don’t sound like we [are] Understanding them, “said Ue,”
Correspondence gives an insight into deciding in a relaxed agency that burn for her fire “Making statistics” who left creators of politics with “Main Blinds of Stains”.
LFs with ONS began to break significantly during the Coid-19 pandemia when they were forced to switch from personal to telephone interviews. By the end of 2023. The response rate on the survey fell to Below 15 percent.
Despite the plans to move on to the Internet TLFS by March 2024, “Systematically” investments and “repeating excessive optimism” He has significantly delayed the project, according to an internal examination of ONS.
Employment estimates are still based on the wrong original research, and the TLFS transition is not expected at least 2026.
The ons of October 2023 have highlighted “nervousness” among key stakeholders about moving to Tlfs prematurely, citing concerns due to data quality.
Ons did not comment.
