Receive free Economic statistics updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Economic statistics news every morning.
The writer is the UK’s National Statistician
At a time like this, it’s hard not to reach for the words attributed to John Maynard Keynes on decision making with uncertain evidence: “When the facts change, I change my mind.” Yet in upgrading our official estimates for economic growth in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 — and in effect rewriting elements of the UK’s economic narrative in the process — that is the position the Office for National Statistics has found itself in.
Measuring the entire value of a national economy worth about £2.5tn is not a simple task. It depends on gathering huge volumes of data covering every sector of activity — from households, retailers, banks and corporations as well as across…
