UK data coherence

While progress has been made around developing coherent UK labour market estimates, risks remain, given the divergence of work on the respective labour force surveys by ONS and the Northern Ireland Statistics Research Agency (NISRA). In parallel to ONS transforming the LFS for Great Britain, NISRA is transforming its labour force survey in Northern Ireland, by developing a shorter Labour Market Survey (LMS). Users told us that they were concerned about UK comparability, the availability of UK-level estimates and stressed the importance of this. Currently, ONS and NISRA plan to transition to their respective online surveys at separate times.

ONS is working collaboratively with NISRA to ensure that user needs are met and to overcome these challenges. NISRA and ONS have presented together on the topic of UK coherence to the technical and wider user groups. ONS also includes a section on UK data coherence in its TLFS updates on progress and plans.

NISRA and ONS have agreed a plan to overcome a recent challenge around a shorter period in which the data need to be processed and the UK estimates generated. ONS will combine the LMS data, including seasonal adjustments, with the corresponding data from Great Britain to enable the production of results covering the UK. Initially the GB data will be from the LFS; then, in time, they will come from the TLFS. To improve user confidence, ONS should publish more detail about the delivery of coherent transformed UK labour market estimates, once the plans have been finalised.