The UK’s Office for National Statistics announced today that it will not publish its usual full employment data as it transitions to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS).

Last month the ONS published experimental labour market data amid increased uncertainty around the Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates. The experimental figures were derived using growth rates from Pay as You Earn Real-Time Information and the Claimant Count for the periods from May to July 2023 onwards.

“The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been facing the challenge of falling response rates for household surveys, as have other comparable countries,” the ONS stated. “This issue became more acute in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data collected for August 2023. The LFS estimates due to be published in October 2023 were suspended because of quality concerns.”

“We have therefore developed a comprehensive plan to address these concerns and reintroduce LFS estimates,” it added. “The plan covers both data collection and methodological improvements and will affect labour market-related releases in November and December 2023. We are also continuing to transition to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). This is already in the field, and we expect it to become the primary source for the labour market release in March 2024.”

The planned improvements include reimplementing in-home interviewing to boost responses, a change in recontacting households to boost responses, prioritising young adult households to improve the representation of responses, increasing the sample size, recruiting field interviewers, and improving communications.

The ONS will also update the population figures used in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimation. Additionally, the ONS plans to improve the LFS non-response adjustment, useing model-based approaches, and replace the LFS with the TLFS.

According to the ONS, these data collection and methodological improvements aim to reintroduce Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates in December 2023.

November’s data will not include:

• Employment in the UK bulletin
• Labour market in the regions of the UK bulletin
• Quarterly datasets, which include labour market flows
• Young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET) bulletin
• Working and workless households in the UK bulletin

The ONS said it plans to produce the usual labour market overview in December, UK bulletin;

Employment in the UK bulletin; and Labour market in the regions of the UK bulletin. However, this is dependent on the response to data collection and methodological improvements.