Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to continue to use the Labour Market Force survey as the basis for estimating the number of people categorised as NEET.

Official statistics on the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training aged 18-24 years old are estimated using the Labour Force Survey – a large, nationally representative household survey.

These official statistics publications include:

• DfE NEET 16 to 24 year olds in England, which include NEET estimates for 18-24 year olds for England.
• ONS Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK - Office for National Statistics, which includes NEET 18-24 year old estimates for the UK.

DWP uses NEET Official Statistics estimated using the LFS alongside other data sources - such as administrative data from the benefit system like the youth claimant count and administrative data from the PAYE system of employees on payroll – to form a view of what is happening with young people in the labour market.

The ONS have faced challenges collecting data via the LFS. These challenges means that LFS-based labour market statistics are currently badged as Official Statistics in Development. As a result of the smaller survey participation rates, additional caution should be taken when interpreting results from the LFS since late 2023. This is transparently explained in Official Statistics publications from DfE and the ONS.

The ONS introduced an LFS recovery and sustainability in 2023/2024 and a wider Survey Improvement and Enhancement Plan in 2025 to improve responses across the survey resulting in significant improvements to numbers interviewed since 2023. The latest update on actions taken by the ONS to recover the LFS sample and the latest response rates/sample sizes can be found in the following publications - Labour Force Survey quality update - Office for National Statistics and Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring reports - Office for National Statistics. These show that sample sizes have started to recover as a result of actions taken by the ONS.

At official level DWP regularly engages with ONS and DfE colleagues to help understand their data collection and statistics production; and to help improve the quality of the data and ensure it is useful for DWP’s business needs.

The ONS are transforming how they collect and produce LFS data to improve the quality of these statistics. One key aim of the TLFS is to develop it as an online-first multi-mode survey, to ensure it is as easy as possible for respondents to engage. Further information on the TLFS can be found here: Labour market transformation – update on progress and plans - Office for National Statistics. The publication of TLFS headline labour market statistics is currently scheduled for November 2026, although this may extend into 2027 if assessment of TLFS data quality requires more data to be collected and assessed before transition to using TLFS data as the basis from Labour Market Statistics.

DfE and ONS plan to continue using LFS/TLFS data to estimate the number of young people categorised as NEET.