Research finds that local job data gives “volatile” results

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A major poll on local recruitment levels managed by the UK’s besieged statistics agency have great defects and restrictions, the researchers have warned the councils to predict the needs of future infrastructure.

The annual business records office for national statistics and the recruitment process gave “volatile” results that often significantly reduce business activity, especially in the advanced sectors, according to analysts at Cambridge University.

Judgment on the poll – which the government describes “the official source of employee estimates and employment through geography and detailed industry” – will add questions about quality Ons Data.

The agency, which was prepared for official reviews in its numbers next month, faced increasing criticism from politicians and England Bank, which was raised by the prominent failure in the decisive labor market data in late 2023.

In the past two weeks, ONS has postponed the main trade data, suspended the publication of two prices for prices that help in calculating GDP, and criticized by the Institute of Financial Studies to the suffocating “economic thinking” in the way to re -evaluate the wealth of pensions.

Questions were raised about a BRES poll in the analysis conducted by the Cambridge University’s Business Center at Cambridge at the foreground, a local advocacy group to expand the city that includes the university, major technology companies and developers.

The research found that the annual BRES survey, which depends on responses from 85,000 companies across Great Britain, constantly reduced actual employment levels in Cambridge when examining them against data at the company level derived from corporate databases.

Between 2019 and 2022, an ONS survey recorded an increase of 3.8 percent in employment in the IT sector, but data from the Business Research Center found an increase of 8.3 percent.

“Many factors have led to problems with ONS, including sampling sizes due to cost reduction and failure to verify excessive results.

He added that the survey was also limited using the outdated industrial classification (SIC), which is necessary for international comparisons but “a very bad representation of the structure of modern industry”, after the last update in 2007.

“There is no perfect data, but what we say is that we believe that we are closer to the truth than it (ONS),” Kush added, noting that CBR wrote to the agency in December 2023 on reconnaissance cases after discussions that started five years ago.

according to ONS numbers, BRES numbers “are widely used” by local government planning departments “to predict trends in employment in their specified areas.

Dan Thorpe, CEO of the upcoming Cambridge company, said that the government growth task “risks undermining defects in the official data used by the councils, infrastructure service providers and organizers for planning purposes.

He added: “We see it directly in Cambridge, where the local labor that is measured by ONS is less than estimated what is seen and measured on the ground.”

Thorp cited two modern infrastructure projects – the Cambridge North and Cambridgeshire railway – which witnessed a much larger demand than it was planned after the opening shortly after.

The local government officials at Cambridgeshire said that although the planners used the BRES data for both projects, they assigned separate research when developing the current joint local plan for the boycott due to “shortcomings” in contrast to the “actual developed growth” in the region.

ONS said in a statement that the BRES survey presented a “good -quality snapshot” of local workers, which was divided by industry and geography, but insisted that it was also clear about the survey restrictions with users.

The agency said: “We also notice very clearly in our bulletin, the quality of the sample estimates for small geographical regions may deteriorate, and this must be taken into account when conducting conclusions about the numbers.”

ONS added that it works to review SIC in line with international requirements in order to ensure the ability to compare the UK data with those in other countries.

Data is visualized by Clara Murray