Information Note on Changes to CSO Labour Market Statistics

Effective from Q3 2017, the QNHS is being replaced by a new Labour Force Survey (LFS).

This is part of a major Household Survey Development (HSD) project that the CSO has been engaged in over the past number of years with the aim of expanding the range of social statistics to meet new needs for information on households and persons. This new survey includes the introduction of Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), a redesigned questionnaire and enhancements to the survey methodology.

The introduction of such large scale changes will inevitably lead to discontinuity in some series and this is in line with international experience of introducing such large scale changes. However the CSO will seek to limit such discontinuities by back-casting of existing QNHS data using the results from the new survey.

The first results from this new survey, which will be for Q3 2017, will be published before the end of January 2018. These will incorporate the revision of population estimates arising from the 2016 Census of Population along with a back-cast series of the existing data for the QNHS.