Meeting user need: communication of plans and priorities
1. To help users to appropriately use the available data and make plans for future analysis, ONS should clearly communicate to users its plans on:
a) further reweighting of the LFS, including making it easier for users to understand what population data have been used in the reweighting and explain to users the impacts for use of the lack of Scotland Census 2022 data.
b) reintroduction of the currently suspended longitudinal and household LFS data. If these data are not planned to be reinstated, ONS should set out when it expects it these datasets to be available based on TLFS data.
Actions taken and commitments made by ONS to meet the requirement
a) ONS has provided further information on the population data currently available and how these have been used in the current weighting approach in its Labour market transformation update on progress and plans report in April 2024. ONS is aware that there is a range of datasets and weights currently available on different bases. A further annex in its article sets out some of the considerations that users should make when using different data from the LFS ecosystem.
ONS has also explored options for further reweighting and held a workshop with key users to understand their priorities regarding reweighting. As set out in its July 2024 update on the TLFS and LFS, and following a strong steer from key users, ONS plans to reweight the LFS data based on the population projections published in January this year. The same population projections will also be applied to the TLFS weighting, so that future data shares of LFS and TLFS will be comparable.
b) ONS reintroduced longitudinal and household LFS-derived data as part of the labour market statistics published in May 2024.
LFS flow estimates were reinstated in May 2024 (with January to March 2024 estimates weighted in line with the quarterly LFS estimates). The back series has not been reweighted. As such, reweighted seasonally adjusted flows estimates are not yet available.
ONS published data on Working and workless households in the UK on 29 May 2024. There are data missing for the July to September 2023 quarter (estimates unavailable due to quality concerns), and data from October to December 2023 are weighted to the same population totals as the quarterly LFS estimates, resulting in a discontinuity in these series.
The future availability of historic data for household and longitudinal datasets on a consistent basis will continue to be considered as part of wider ongoing conversations within ONS and in discussion with users on their priorities for reweighting.
OSR judgement
We consider this requirement to be met. ONS has provided further information on the population data currently available and how these have been used in the current weighting approach and outlined its future reweighting plans. ONS has committed to further updates on this.
ONS has generally implemented its plans to reintroduce longitudinal and household LFS-derived data. We note that there is still some further work to be done and are reassured by ONS’s commitment to consider this as part of its wider ongoing conversations around reweighting LFS data.
We expect ONS to continue its approach, including updating users on future reweighting plans, as it implements further LFS improvements.