ONS Invests £8m to Fix ‘Unusable’ Employment Data Ahead of Bank of England Rate Decision

Economists caution that policymakers are blindsided by the survey problems due to poor response rates, which the ONS stated may not be resolved till 2027.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) agency is spending £8m to employ an army of low-paid temporary workers to fix its ‘unusable’ ONS data on employment in the United Kingdom, which will impact millions of households.

The Office of National Statistics has agreed to a multimillion-pound agreement with the employment agency Randstad to recruit an interviewer to improve the reliability of its labor force survey (LFS) since it had concerns over its quality.

The survey, which gives the monthly status of the jobs, is the most crucial data used by the government and the Bank of England when setting interest rates and other choices that impact millions of households.

The ONS’s commitment to improving data quality is critical for informed decision-making across various sectors.

Economists caution that policymakers are blindsided by the ONS survey problems due to poor response rates, which the ONS stated may not be resolved till 2027.

ONS announced in a separate setback to postpone updating its inflation dataset in the efforts to include millions of grocery prices recorded by supermarket checkout scanners.

By addressing these issues, the ONS aims to ensure that the data it provides remains relevant and accurate for policymakers.

The ONS will hire interviewers through Randstad who would drive and knock on people’s doors in the UK to encourage them to fill out its online surveys.

The government statistics agency will increase its permanent workforce of 549 workers from the 148 professionals hired by Randstad.

Randstad will advertise online jobs with pay of £12.55 an hour for driving field agents who work 22-30 hours a week for three months £12.55 per hour, which is slightly more than the £12.21 level at which the national living wage will increase starting in April.

Unions claimed that hiring temporary workers reflected their long-standing issues like poor pay, government budget cuts, and low staff morale.

The general secretary of the PCS trade union, Fran Heathcote, stated that ONS would be better off hiring long-term workers than paying millions for an agency, which is a short-term solution.

Union leaders said that cost-cutting and high staff turnover were the reasons behind LFS problems, with 25% yearly turnover among permanent workers and internal staff surveys indicating that they are not satisfied with the management or the pay.

Economic survey response rates have slowly reduced in the United Kingdom and the United States and completely collapsed during the pandemic when in-person interviews were paused. It is now planning to keep more online surveys.

It fell from 40% in 2019 to 12.7% in 2023 but later recovered to 20%. Even if they got 47000 responses, it was being used to figure out the working conditions for 45 million people.

The latest figures released on Tuesday showed that there was an increase in unemployment, one of the anticipated data released before the Bank of England rate decision.

Randstad stated that they are committed to giving employees competitive salaries and benefits to meet the industry standards.

An ONS representative said they are working to address the declining ONS survey response problems by hiring more interviewers. They are also preparing to modify the labor force survey as a long-term solution.

He added that it has taken them some time to develop the new self-completion survey to ensure that they are meeting the quality requirements of the users.

They have recently evaluated a shorter version of the questionnaire to improve the data’s quality.

He added that they strive for staff to feel honest and inclusive so that they can give feedback whenever they feel like facing challenges. So, they have commissioned a lessons-learned review in the Transformed Labour Force Survey project to ensure everyone’s views are involved in the survey.