| A crisis around the UK’s employment statistics has been blamed on funding constraints, a lack of modernization and staff being afraid to raise problems, my colleagues reveal tonight in an astonishing story just breaking as we go to pixel. Workers at the Office for National Statistics had concerns for their “psychological safety” and were reluctant to raise issues with bosses, Tom Rees and Philip Aldrick reveal. The ONS conducted an internal review in the summer and mentioned it in minutes, published last month. The minutes refer to “the perception that positive messaging was needed at a senior level, which had impacted the ability of colleagues to escalate risks” and “anxiety amongst colleagues to raise issues” at the ONS. Former and current staff at the agency separately detailed in interviews with Bloomberg how the problem had been building for almost a decade. They expressed frustration with what they saw as a string of missed opportunities to avert the current crisis of confidence in key economic indicators.
You might recall that the ONS suspended its survey of the jobs market in October 2023 due to a sharp drop in responses, and, although the survey has since resumed, there are still doubts over its accuracy. Now we know the roots of the problem — and the ONS says it could take until 2027 to fix it, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report.
The findings throw much of economic policymaking in this country into freefall — there are now “major concerns about the UK’s ability to set monetary and fiscal policy appropriately in the absence of reliable data about the labor market,” Meg Hiller, the chair of the Treasury select committee, said. The Bank of England has also despaired at the problem, saying it makes it more difficult to judge the tightness of the jobs market — a crucial factor when setting interest rates. Do read the entirety of Tom and Phil’s report here. Want this in your inbox each weekday? You can sign up here. | 
