Digest opened free editor
Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The head of the National Statistics Office in the first public defense said that the agency’s failure to the critical labor market data.
Sir Ian Diamond, UK National Statistical Statistics, told Tuesday that On S “is very confident” in the data that it was found that the number of people who do not work at work and do not search for work because of health health has risen to about 2.8 million since.
In Post since 2019, Diamond has been criticized by politicians, England and analysts on deep root problems with a workforce on ONS, a major entrance to the central bank’s decisions on interest rates.
Politics makers cannot put any weight on the scan -based numbers at the present time because a sharp decrease in response rates, which led to prejudice to the results, made them unreliable.
“Please, please, please don’t think I am satisfied. Diamond said a selected treasury committee in the House of Commons:” I wake up at night worried about this all the time. ”
But he said that although the bias had infiltrated the data, it was confident that the rise in the lack of activity related to the health shown in the numbers was real.
“What we see in fixed polls. He said,” We see this constantly as a factor for the years in our country, “adding that the increase reflects the high mental health rates between young people and a” journey of workforce “between more than the fifties.
The ministers had previously witnessed an increase in activity – unique to Britain between advanced economies – as a major obstacle to economic growth and inflation factors.
However, independent research has suspected the results of ONS, and the Bank of England has said that it is no longer convinced that there is no rise in public activity since the beginning of 2020.
Despite the survey problems, Diamond said he was confident in the general direction, which was consistent with the records of allegations of advantages that the government kept and reflects the concerted efforts by the interviews on ONS to reach people in more deprived areas.
The role of Diamond in the collapse of labor market data in the UK for sharp audit, following the internal ONS review that blamed strategic leadership and an internal culture that made employees at low levels hesitant to stir up concerns.
He told MPS that low response rates to LFS were a long concern, which was “watching very carefully and controlled.” But he said that he only realizes the fragility of the scan in October 2023, when his agency suddenly published the results from the results that were clearly unreasonable.
When asked about the results of the decision organization that did not propose any increase in the rate of economic lack of activity since Covid, Diamond said that comparing Think-Tank characters with those ons was “like an attempt to compare Torquay United with Manchester City”.
Diaond said that ONS has almost doubled the number of families related to them to overcome “very high levels of flat rejection” to respond, increase incentives from 10 pounds to 50 pounds and recruit more interviews.
He added that although the agency’s goal is to expand its field power to 1000, it will not have enough financing to strike the level of 1500 that the review found “to obtain great statistics in all investigative studies.”
Meanwhile, ONS is working to overcome problems in surveying the “transformed” workforce online that aims to replace LFS, after delay due to the problems related to the length and design of the questionnaire.
Diaond said that TLFS may be ready to replace LFS at a early time from the date of 2027 presented by ONS last year-it is likely to be from early 2026.
However, he admitted that ONS was still struggling to employ and keep interviews and other employees, partly because the agency pays lower salaries than private sector research companies and other departments.
There is a market within the civil service. “We are relatively low,” he said, adding that ONS was trying to promote experienced interviews to a better degree than their wages and asked HM Treasury to support this.
Diamond admitted, “ONS felt the effects of increased activity among older workers in their field power, noting:” Our best interviews. ” . . Not all of them have no workforce since the epidemic. “
This story has been modified to clarify the height of people who are considered ineffective economically since Kofid