ONS to spend millions on temp workers to fix ‘unusable’ UK employment data
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Exclusive: Office for National Statistics to spend £8m in deal with employment agency Randstad to recruit hires. The government’s statistics agency is spending £8m to hire an army of low-paid temporary workers amid efforts to fix its “virtually unusable” data on unemployment and wages in Britain.
Under pressure over the quality of its data, the Office for National Statistics last month agreed the multimillion-pound deal with the employment agency Randstad to recruit interviewers to help increase the reliability of its labour force survey (LFS).
Providing monthly snapshots on jobs and pay, the survey is one of the most important datasets used by the government and the Bank of England when setting interest rates and taking decisions affecting millions of households. However, economists warn policymakers are “flying blind” amid issues with the survey caused by low response rates, which the ONS admitted last month could take until 2027 to fix.
With the Bank of England facing a crunch decision on interest rates on 6 February, Andrew Goodwin, the chief UK economist at Oxford Economics, said: “We think that valid concerns about the quality of data from the UK’s labour force survey make it virtually unusable at present … policymakers are flying blind without reliable data.”.
Under the terms of the £8m contract, the ONS will use Randstad to hire field interviewers, who drive to knock on the doors of homes across Britain, nudging people to complete its online surveys. The government statistics agency will use 148 agency staff recruited through Randstad to add to its 549-strong permanent workforce. It is also plans to use the recruitment firm Alexander Mann Solutions to hire about 200 face-to-face interviewers by the end of May 2025.
