UK jobs data are sending opposing signals as improvements to a household survey likely raised recent employment growth estimates temporarily, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Tuesday.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimated 29.9 million UK employees in the three months through August 2026, up 314,000 from a year earlier. Payroll data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) showed 92,000 fewer employees over the same period. The ONS considers payroll data its most reliable measure of employee numbers, though the two sources collect and process information differently.
The agency said increased survey incentives and interviewer staffing have helped restore responses after serious quality problems in 2023. More employed people are now responding, which the ONS said has likely lifted recent survey estimates of employment growth for a time.
The April-to-June survey dataset held 81,193 individual records, including cases filled in using information from earlier interviews. Excluding those cases, it held 62,630 records. The larger total was 36,955 above its 2023 low but 2,869 below the figure recorded in late 2019. The UK household response rate, which excludes imputed cases, was 23.4%, down 2.1 percentage points from the previous quarter.
The ONS said uncertainty around employment and economic inactivity rates has narrowed to prepandemic ranges. Unemployment estimates remain less precise, while figures for smaller groups, including young people outside employment, education or training, remain volatile.
A separate allocation error left the survey’s telephone collection operation short-staffed in May. About 4,000 fewer records could be linked across interview rounds to estimate movements among employment, unemployment and inactivity. In ONS simulations with a similar number of linked cases removed, the general direction of those movements held, but estimates of net movements became less precise.
The ONS aims to use the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) for headline labor-market statistics in 2027. Its next update on the survey overhaul is planned for November, followed by another comparison of labor-market data sources in December.
