Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the latest economy statistics published by the ONS showing that economic inactivity in Wales has increased by by 1.7 per cent to 28 per cent, 5.9 per cent above the UK average?
Care needs to be taken when assessing what is happening to the labour market in Wales at present. It is advised that a range of data sources are considered, and changes are viewed over a longer time series, so the broad trends can be identified.
Data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) are particularly volatile at present, with some large changes between periods being exhibited. These may not be wholly representative of what may be happening in the labour market in Wales at present. LFS estimates and their changes between periods appear to be inconsistent with what other labour market data sources are showing, like the Annual Population Survey and administrative sources, such as payrolled employees from HMRC’s real time information. As a result, the current headline labour market statistics from the LFS are classified by ONS as ‘official statistics in development’.
The ONS are continuing their work to improve their labour market estimates, with a more robust data source expected to be provided through its Transformed Labour Force Survey. The first estimates from that data should be available later this year.