The Office for National Statistics is merging household surveys, HMRC payroll records and linked employer-employee datasets to build a more joined-up picture of the UK labour market.
The ONS has published an update on its labour market transformation programme, explaining how it plans to combine traditional survey methods with administrative data — including HM Revenue and Customs Pay As You Earn Real Time Information — to improve the timeliness, quality and coherence of employment statistics. The work involves reforming the Labour Force Survey and developing a new Transformed Labour Force Survey alongside the Linked Employer–Employee Dataset, which connects information about individual workers with data about their employers.
PAYE Real Time Information gives the ONS timely data on payrolled employees and earnings, but the figures show it does not cover all forms of employment or people outside the payroll system. That gap is why surveys remain part of the picture — they capture labour market characteristics that tax records simply don’t.
The ONS is careful to distinguish between employment, payrolled employment, jobs, unemployment, economic inactivity and claimant-based measures, because these concepts come from different sources and are not directly interchangeable. Changing data sources also raises questions about continuity — users comparing new estimates with previously published figures will need to account for methodological differences.
The tweet announcing the update contained a typographical error, describing the publication as a “bog post”; it is understood the intended wording was “blog post”. The post was written by Liz McKeown and Daniel Ayoubkhani, who set out what the ONS has learned so far from combining surveys, administrative records and linked datasets.
Work with the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence is assessing how linked employer–employee data can improve quality assurance and show where administrative data complements — rather than replaces — survey estimates. For UK-level results, Northern Ireland labour market information will likely draw on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency Labour Market Survey, combined with data from Great Britain.
The ONS published a progress update on the Linked Employer–Employee Dataset on 15 April 2026, and a separate update on the future of the Transformed Labour Force Survey on 11 August 2026.
Source: @ONS