Labour Force Survey quality update: September 2025

• Two full calendar quarters of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, which include the main interventions made to address quality concerns in all five waves, are now available.

• Response levels and rates have shown clear improvement because of these interventions, with Wave 1 response levels now very close to their pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level, although response levels for Waves 2 to 5 are still below their pre-pandemic level.

• The composition of respondents according to different characteristics has also shown some improvement since late 2023; however, representativeness is lower than before the pandemic and has not improved for all characteristics.

• Investigations suggest that the current weighting of the LFS remains the best approach, with relevant insights being fed into the development of weighting methods for the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS).

• Coherence between the LFS and the other data sources for employment remains a challenge but we have seen over the last year, level estimates of the number of employees from the LFS converge with those from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information and workforce jobs, likely because of, at least in part, the operational improvements to the LFS.

• Caution is still advised when assessing change over time periods (particularly those affected by operational changes) and when analysing more detailed estimates, as these remain subject to greater volatility than headline estimates.

• Further increases to interviewer capacity are planned for Waves 2 to 5 and will further improve response levels and representativeness, while a full reweighting of the LFS and Annual Population Survey (which are currently being planned) will further improve the coherence of our estimates.

• TLFS remains the long-term solution for collecting labour market data, with a short longitudinal "Core" labour market-focused survey; this is complemented by a separate cross-sectional "Plus" survey to provide wider socioeconomic, household, and local data.

As set out in our previous articles, since October 2023, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has made several changes to address quality concerns with the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The five-wave structure of the LFS means that some of these changes can take at least 15 months to fully feed through into survey estimates and at least 18 months to feed through into measures of quarterly change. This article provides an update to our most recent Labour Force Survey quality update: May 2025 article published in May. We cover data up to the period of April to June 2025, to align with the latest data covered in our Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring report: April to June 2025 methodology, published in August 2025.

This article provides an update on how the quality of the LFS has evolved recently, considering the impact on response levels and rates, the characteristics of respondents, and the statistics. It will focus on the LFS for simplicity, but given the linked design of the two surveys, impacts on the LFS also affect the size and quality of the Annual Population Survey (APS).

For many years, household surveys both in the UK and in comparable countries have been facing the challenge of falling response rates. Coupled with challenges in collecting and processing survey data since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, quality concerns became acute for Labour Force Survey (LFS) data collected in 2023. This led to the suspension of publications based on LFS data, and the withdrawal of accredited statistics status for publications based upon LFS and Annual Population Survey (APS) data from 2024 onwards.

In response to these concerns, several changes were made to the operation and processing of LFS data since late 2023. These have been detailed in previous articles, but the main changes include:

• reinstating the sample boost (January 2024) – sample 55% larger than before the pandemic

• increasing incentives (October 2023)

• returning to face-to-face interviewing (October 2023)

• recruitment of additional interviewers (ongoing)

• interim reweighting exercises (published in February and December 2024)

Throughout this article, we refer to a mixture of Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for Great Britain and for the UK. The operational responsibility for data collection is split between the Office for National Statistics (ONS, for Great Britain) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA, for Northern Ireland). The ONS has responsibility for publishing statistics at a UK level. Data regarding the collection of the survey often refers to Great Britain, while references to published statistical measures often refer to the UK as a whole.

The changes described in Section 2 continue to have a clear positive effect on the number of achieved responses to the LFS. Figure 1 shows that the overall level of response has increased steadily since July to September 2023. Considering the number of responses for the UK, including imputation (which is the same as the number of cases available to analyse in a dataset), there were 74,186 responses to the LFS in April to June 2025. This is an increase of 29,948 from the low point in July to September 2023. However, this does remain 9,876 responses below the figure seen in October to December 2019.

Breaking this down by wave of response, as reported in our LFS performance and quality monitoring report, we have seen Wave 1 response levels almost recover to pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels. There were 8,555 interviews conducted in April to June 2025, compared with 8,963 in October to December 2019. Waves 2 to 5 remain further from their pre-pandemic position, with 24,822 individual responses in the latest period, compared with 26,823 at the end of 2019.

There has been a slight drop off in response levels when imputations are excluded in the most recent period because of the timing of Easter and the May bank holidays. However, the increases we have seen recently are likely to continue following this.  

We have also seen improvements to response rates to the LFS, although they are more moderate by this measure. For a given period, the response rate for each wave is calculated by dividing the number of responding households in that wave or period by the number of households issued for that cohort when it was in its first wave. Attrition between waves typically means that later waves have lower response rates, and that households drop out of the survey. However, the original issued sample size remains largely fixed.

Figure 2 shows that response rates for all waves in the latest period in Great Britain remained below their pre-pandemic positions. The overall response rate for April to June 2025 was 21.1%, an increase of 8.4 percentage points since July to September 2023, but 17.4 percentage points below October to December 2019.

Even though the response rate for Wave 1 has largely stabilised in recent periods, improvements for Waves 2 to 5 have continued into more recent periods as interviewer numbers in these waves have increased. However, this is with little change in response rate between January to March 2025 and April to June 2025.

The larger impact on levels compared with rates is caused by the boost to the sample of the LFS, which remains 55% larger than before the pandemic. The level of response has grown by a proportionally smaller amount.

Further information on survey response levels and response rates can be found in our LFS performance and quality monitoring report.

This higher LFS response level helps to increase the precision in our estimates. This is shown by the confidence intervals for our headline labour supply estimates, which are presented in Figure 3. Across all three headline rates, these have narrowed since mid- to late-2023, which suggests improved precision compared with the periods where response rates were at their lowest. However, confidence intervals remain wider than before the pandemic, reflecting the trends in response.

Detailed estimates will continue to see greater volatility compared with more aggregated measures. However, this has always been a feature of LFS-based analysis to some extent, when all else is equal. The lower achieved response level for the latest periods, compared with response levels before the pandemic, will make this volatility more acute.

For example, we can consider estimates of redundancies or estimates of young people not in employment, education or training. Both concepts focus on much smaller population subgroups compared with the headline rates, and therefore continue to see relatively large quarterly changes, despite improved sample sizes.

Responses for the two-quarter longitudinal dataset have improved since their low point in October to December 2023 and stood at 17,258 in April to June 2025, an increase of 7,253 over that period. However, this is still below the pre-coronavirus level of 21,928 in October to December 2019. Response for the two-quarter longitudinal dataset is likely to be further improved by the increase in interviewers working on Waves 2 to 5 until the end of 2025.  Analysis of flows data is ongoing as improvements continue to be implemented. We will provide more information in future updates.

Changes to the composition of respondents, according to a range of characteristics, is important when considering the quality of LFS statistics. This is highlighted in our Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring report article published in May.

Ideally, those responding to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) would be broadly representative of the overall population for which we are estimating. However, we know that the likelihood of responding to surveys varies regarding several different characteristics. For this reason, we apply a range of statistical methods to our data, particularly with respect to weighting and non-response bias adjustments. These aim to ensure that our estimates are as representative as possible.

LFS weighting uses several characteristics, including:

• age

• sex

• location of respondent

• housing tenure (included since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic)

Our non-response bias adjustments operate at the household level and focus on Indices of Multiple Deprivation and Output Area Classification.

We can analyse a range of characteristics to understand how the composition of respondents has shifted over time. For brevity, only a selection of these will be covered in this report.

These analyses showed that for a range of these characteristics, we have seen relatively large compositional shifts in recent years within our unweighted datasets. Initially, these moved the composition away from benchmarks like Census 2021, followed by improvement for some characteristics, as recovery actions were taken. The most significant of these recovery actions fed into point-in-time estimates for January to March and estimates of change for April to June. However, we continue to see modest changes in the composition of respondents for some characteristics in the latest quarter.

In each of the following subsections, we compare the unweighted distribution of respondents between different categories over time. We specifically compare July to September 2019, July to September 2023, January to March 2025 and April to June 2025.

For each characteristic, we also include the equivalent distribution from Census 2021 for England and Wales. This acts as a benchmark against which to consider the distributions from the LFS. Legitimate differences can arise for a variety of reasons, because of:

• differences in the questions asked
• differences in population coverage
• genuine change in the population as time progresses

Some characteristics are relatively static, while others can vary more over time. This makes a fixed benchmark less useful.

Age

There is good alignment between the unweighted distributions for the LFS in 2019 and for the Census in 2021, with the LFS respondents slightly older, on average, than suggested by the Census. By July to September 2023, this difference is starker, with those aged 50 years and over accounting for 60.2% of LFS respondents compared with 46.9% of census respondents. This fell to 53.2% in January to March 2025. The latest period shows an improvement from this low point, with 52.4% of respondents to the LFS aged 50 years and over, also closer to census benchmarks than in January to March 2025. Data show the weighting has worked well across all periods to account for different sample age compositions.

Housing tenure

The housing tenure characteristic shows a similar pattern. Even though there are differences in the distribution of the tenure type between the census and the LFS in July to September 2019, these are relatively moderate, particularly compared with distributions in later periods. In July to September 2019, 22.2% of respondents were from households that were owned outright. By July to September 2023, the proportion of individuals responding to the LFS from houses that were owned outright was 30%, compared with 19.7% in the census. The main category that offset this increase in the "owned outright" category in the LFS was the "other" category, which includes those renting. In the latest period, again, we see some reversion toward the census with the share for "owned outright" falling to 26.0% compared with 26.5% in the previous quarter. The tenure adjustment was added to the weighting during the pandemic in response to these large changes to ensure estimates remained robust. Analysis has shown it is still required to maintain quality of the estimates.

Disability

The pattern for the disability characteristic is slightly different. Although we see the same shift in distribution for the LFS between 2019 and 2023, there is little change between 2023 and 2025. In July to September 2019, 19.8% of LFS respondents reported being disabled, compared with 15.3% of people in the census. By July to September 2023, the gap between the LFS and Census 2021 had widened; 23.0% of LFS respondents reported having a disability. In the latest data for April to June 2025, the proportion of LFS respondents reporting a disability had grown further to 23.8%, though this is unchanged from January to March 2025. Over time, we have seen a steadily increasing proportion of the population reporting being disabled. Differences in disability distribution remain even after weighting. As LFS is consistently above census in terms of the proportion estimated to be disabled, users should be cautious about comparing estimates from the two sources.

Country of birth

In July to September 2019, 83.4% of LFS respondents were born in the UK, which has been gradually decreasing over time to 81.9% in April to June 2025. In comparison, Census 2021 estimated 78.5% of people in England and Wales were born in the UK. However, trends by country of birth are subject to more natural variation than some other characteristics discussed in this section. Shifts seen during these time periods may reflect real changes among the respondents. However, these shifts could have also occurred because the composition of the responding population has changed, following survey recovery measures.

Summary of composition analysis

Unweighted distributions can be out of alignment with benchmarks like the census, and this is one reason why we apply weights to our data. Weighted distributions for those characteristics controlled for within weighting more closely align with the census.

However, a more representative unweighted sample means that weighting makes it less likely that the data include bias that cannot be controlled for. We remain confident that weighting works as intended for each of these controlled-for characteristics.

Though we have seen some recent improvement for some characteristics, differences in unweighted distributions persist compared with the pre-pandemic period, for example, for housing tenure. This reinforces the ongoing need for the tenure adjustment introduced during the coronavirus pandemic, and for the ongoing monitoring of these distributions.

For disability status, the unweighted distribution of response has continued to diverge from benchmarks implied by Census 2021 for England and Wales. We have therefore considered whether there could be further adjustments to LFS weighting to target additional characteristics like disability status. The main limitation here and elsewhere is a lack of appropriate external benchmark to which weights can be calibrated. This is particularly relevant for those characteristics that are known to vary more over time, where a point-in-time benchmark would not be appropriate.

Furthermore, amendments to the existing weighting can improve estimates in one area at the expense of another. For instance, the removal of tenure from the weighting approach improves the comparability of estimates for disability, but leads to a deterioration in estimates by country of birth.

Recent improvements in the representativeness of the LFS sample have meant that we are now focussing on developing the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). This is also because of the practical limitations of attempting further improvements to the LFS. For this reason, we are not recommending any further adjustments to the weighting approach for the LFS.

Relevant learning from this investigation will inform the ongoing assurance and development of the equivalent methods being applied to the TLFS. This approach has been assured and endorsed by stakeholders, users and academic experts.

Following user feedback, we have carried out some further analysis on the hours worked series and how the changes in composition of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) responses have affected the data.

As LFS response rates have fallen, the unweighted total weekly hours worked has also declined. However, the weighted series shows a relatively stable trend, aside from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic period, with a small increase in total hours worked between 2017 and 2025. The stability of the weighted hours worked series indicates that corrective data collection actions and the weighting framework are, in the measurement of hours worked, mitigating against declining response rates.

Beyond the total number of hours worked, we can also look to the distribution of hours worked to understand whether there have been any underlying shifts through the different phases of LFS performance.

Figure 10 shows that the distribution of average weekly hours worked has been stable from 2019 to 2025, with 40 hours being the largest group in all other periods. However, April to June 2020 is an exception, when 26.1% of respondents worked zero hours. This pattern is matched in the weighted data. While there is a possibility that non-response bias could have changed over the period, the stability of these distributions offers confidence that the LFS is providing reliable estimates of hours worked.

Coherence between the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and the other data sources for employment remains a challenge, and we continue to monitor this closely. We focus on the coherence between LFS employees, and those employment and jobs measures derived from workforce jobs (primarily business surveys) and administrative HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) data. 

Over the last year, level estimates of the number of employees from the LFS have converged with those from the RTI (see Figure 11). This is likely, at least in part, because of the changes to the LFS described earlier in this article. However, the steady improvement in the quality of LFS levels estimates means that measures of change have seen lower coherence with RTI. This is because change estimates include both "real" change in the labour market and change caused by improvements to the operation of the LFS.  

Real Time Information (RTI) and workforce jobs (WFJ) generally track each other well, and in the latest period, both are showing a fall in employees. However, since 2023, LFS and WFJ levels diverged before LFS started to converge again following the collection improvements. We can also adjust both the LFS and WFJ to account for known differences between the concepts of the two measures. In this September 2025 release, we have updated the dataset X03: Reconciliation of estimates of employment and jobs, which details our work on reconciling employment estimates from the LFS and WFJ. These updates incorporate adjustments to account for known measurement and conceptual differences, providing an assessment of the comparability and coherence between the two sources. When known differences are accounted for, the two series also show convergence over the recent periods. The latest published WFJ estimate for June 2025 is 1.304 million (or 3.7%) higher than the LFS total jobs estimate for May to July 2025. Once adjusted for measurable factors, the WFJ June 2025 estimate is 0.534 million (or 1.5%) higher than the LFS jobs estimate for May to July 2025.  

Overall, our assessment is that levels estimates in the LFS are improving now that the changes made in January 2024 have fed through the full LFS sample. We have also updated the population data used in the weighting process in February and December 2024. In addition, we are still making improvements to the LFS by increasing the number of interviewers focusing on Waves 2 to 5 of the LFS. This will continue to improve quality over the rest of the year, although these improvements are likely to be smaller in scale than the major changes to date. We are also planning further reweighting for the LFS as outlined in Section 7.

We still recommend using a range of data sources to inform views on the labour market. We suggest balancing the information provided across survey and administrative data sources, as well as data on other relevant concepts like earnings and vacancies. We will continue to provide an assessment of coherence and quality of estimates as part of our monthly Labour Market Overview bulletin.

In July 2025, we set out our latest plans for transitioning to the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), following the implementation of an improved design. This included a shortened labour market-focussed questionnaire which launched in early July 2025. We will carry out a readiness assessment based on data from the new design in collaboration with our main users in July 2026. We are aiming for transition of priority labour market statistics in November 2026. However, transition timing will be data-led and could be in 2027 if our assessment or user needs need more data to be collected and assessed. 

In this context, the recent improvements to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) are important. This is because they increase confidence that the LFS can be fit for purpose until transition takes place, and are a more robust point of comparison when assessing TLFS estimates. We intend to make the next LFS reweighting a "full" reweighting exercise, covering estimates back to 2011 for the complete suite of LFS and APS datasets. This reflects preferences among users of LFS and Annual Population Survey (APS) data and sets a clear benchmark for LFS estimates ahead of a future transition to the TLFS. The precise timing of this full reweighting exercise is still being finalised, with the availability of subnational population projections being essential for us to start the reweighting work.

As we work towards transition, it will be necessary to focus efforts on building TLFS quality and preparing for a smooth transition. For this reason, we do not anticipate any further significant change, or changes being made to the LFS beyond the "full" reweighting described above. We expect further increases to the number of interviewers available to complete interviews at Waves 2 to 5 of the survey by the end of the year.

These increases in the coverage of Waves 2 to 5 of the survey improve the level and composition of the response to the survey. Through this, our number of achieved interviews for all waves of the LFS, and subsequent dataset sizes, should be comparable with pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels. These changes are more modest in nature compared with those implemented throughout 2024.

As set out in July 2025, we will be publishing quarterly updates on progress towards TLFS transition, with the next article being published in October 2025. Wider information on developments to LFS will also be provided, such as details on reweighting. Our latest views on interpreting LFS data and the labour market narrative will remain in the monthly labour market overview bulletin.

In addition to our programme of work on the TLFS, we are also exploring the further use of administrative data. At present, our work is focussed on the linkage of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) data to our labour force surveys. Separately, as part of our work to develop a linked employer-employee dataset, we are working to link the HMRC PAYE RTI data to our Inter-Departmental Business Register. Our intention is that these two complementary workstreams will provide useful insights on the quality of our labour market statistics, for instance, improving our understanding of potential sources of bias in our estimates.