UK statistics agency struggles to restore survey capacity

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UK statistics agency survey challenges

Highlights

ONS employs 832 interviewers, still below the minimum 875 needed to fully restore household survey quality after sustained recruitment efforts.
Staffing shortfall and parallel running of old and new Labour Force Surveys constrain improvements to Wealth and Assets Survey and Living Costs and Food Survey, which inform GDP and inflation estimates.
ONS considers making some household surveys mandatory to boost response rates, aiming to advise ministers by early 2027 amid concerns over potential negative impact on data quality.

Recruitment drive delays survey recovery

As reported by Financial Times, citing the Office for National Statistics, the agency says its field force remains below the minimum level needed to fully restore the quality of major household surveys. It currently employs 832 interviewers, short of the required 875, even after a year-long effort to strengthen staffing.

The shortfall is limiting work to raise responses to the Wealth and Assets Survey and the Living Costs and Food Survey. Those datasets support public policy on pensions and also feed into estimates of GDP and inflation.

The agency says many interviewers are still tied up with the parallel running of the long-standing Labour Force Survey and the transformed Labour Force Survey designed to replace it. ONS says this operational complexity has slowed improvements elsewhere, although it hopes to bring staffing back to the required minimum by October, with interviews for two large recruitment rounds under way.

ONS has also tried to reduce staff turnover by moving agency workers on to civil service contracts and upgrading safety devices for lone workers who face hostility from the public while conducting door-to-door interviews.

Policy and economic impact in focus

Beyond recruitment, the staffing problem highlights a broader challenge facing statistics agencies as public willingness to respond to surveys declines over time. ONS says it has restored the sample size of the Labour Force Survey to pre-pandemic levels and increased the response rate for the transformed version, but only by committing far more resources to secure the same number of answers.

James Benford, head of surveys and economic statistics at ONS, says the agency is starting a major work programme to advise ministers on whether some household surveys should become mandatory. ONS plans to report in early 2027, although Benford says compulsory participation could also damage data quality if reluctant respondents submit unusable answers.

The agency also says its latest performance indicators show fewer mistakes in statistical output and no major errors since the previous quarterly update. Jonathan Haskel, who is set to become the next chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, tells MPs that ONS is heading in a much better direction, while warning that earlier Labour Force Survey problems have hampered policy judgments on the long-term productivity outlook.

In our earlier article, we covered Jonathan Haskel’s outlook as the nominee to chair the Office for Budget Responsibility, including his warning that energy-price shocks could keep UK inflation higher for longer while growth remains weak. We also noted his emphasis on persistent productivity headwinds and how problems with official data in recent years have made long-term economic forecasting and policy judgments more difficult.

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