As if the FT are taking their inspiration from Den, we continue with the "Europe is AMAZING" theme from yesterday (#1307491, #1307594)
Apparently Britain's Labor Force Survey, uh, sucks
Nobody is picking up the phone anymore (yesyes, refuse to give response...*), response rates have falling through the floor.
widespread apathy and mistrust from the British public…
yes, nobody wants to give information for no good reason, and among Nigerian princes and scam phone calls, we gonna risk having some honest gov bureaucrat (yes, oxymoron!) be filtered out.
Which is why we’ve always been curious about the comparatively excellent response rates European statistics agencies have been able to maintain, given they face the same notional challenges. Are British people atypically unhelpful when the stats agency comes a-knocking?
Pretty shockingly, apparently people do give labor status info over the phone to some rando?! The authors/statisticians are shocked that the nonresponse rate is so large... I'm shocked that it, for most countries, is so small!
"the UK may have a distinctly bad refusal problem: Brits, offered the chance to help their government gather stats, are the most likely to straight-up refuse (and by some distance)."
I mean, let's pretend/hope that's the reason.
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