December 9, 2024

The news this morning includes complaints about data coming from the UK.

• Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR)
• Office of National Statistics (ONS)
• Bank of England (BOE)
• National Audit Office and local government data

All this data is being questioned after major revisions well after releases.

The ONS has pushed back its timetable for introducing changes to it labour survey to 2027. This survey is known to have major issues around participation and data accuracy currently.

Here are the recent revisions to employment numbers.

The implications of bad economic data are significant most times, but right now it is rather serious. The data affects the models for budgeting because the government has put arbitrary limits on borrowing:

Reeves’ UK Budget Buffer Was Cut £18 Billion by OBR Correction

Here, it is not just the data, it is the economic models that the government uses to somehow always have a reason not to spend enough money on workers and communities.

The reasons for the general data quality problems? Money.

Underfunding, management who do not understand data trying to push through quick fixes, and a general lack of seriousness in government during the Tory's tenure has lead to capacity issues in all these organizations.

Billions were spent on tracking and monitoring people in their day to day lives, on monitoring every move of migrants, and oppressive technology, but no money has been put into updating and tracking things that actually monitor the real economy that affects working people.

Canada, like the rest of the OECD, is in a similar situation. Economic revisions are commonplace and updates to the surveys and data collection have been few and far between. The Harper government cut basic programs and no government has stepped-in to increase funding allocations to our Statistics Canada to support expansion of programs.

Canada is an OECD laggard in economic and social statistics, collecting the least amount of data on the economy of any other nation in the group.