Getting people back to work needs to be top priority for Government: Beckie Hart

What is true for individual businesses is also true for the country.

With the government looking to inject much needed momentum into a struggling economy, and the Bank of England facing huge pressure to control inflation, it’s clear that big decisions about our economic future need to be backed up with reliable data.

The ONS’ labour market statistics is one of the most highly scrutinised public data sets around.

Providing information about rates of employment, unemployment and vacancies, the data supplies an essential snapshot of the UK labour market.

It also provides fertile ground for political debate over the policies that shape our workforce.

With a tight labour market, and firms across the country still crying out for greater access to people and skills, tackling economic inactivity has become one of the most pressing issues in British politics.

Which policy levers to pull largely depends on the evidence policymakers have available to them – making the latest labour market data both timely and important.

That importance has been ramped up further, given the methodological issues that the ONS themselves identified within the data set.

Weeks of review have gone into ironing out those weaknesses, and the ONS are working towards having a more robust and reliable set of data to work with.

So, what does the new data tell us?

The overall picture is of a labour market that may have started to soften but remains tight.

Businesses are struggling to hire the people and skills they need.

That means firms are redeploying funds to meet short-term skills gaps rather than prioritising the longer-term investments that will boost productivity.

If we’re to deliver the long-term sustainable growth the country needs, we urgently need to break that negative cycle.

To achieve that, we need to apply longer-term thinking to address economic inactivity.

It’s time to get behind the data and really understand what is driving people away from the workforce.

Childcare has been a longstanding issue, but new policies kicking in this year should help.

Long-term illness is another problem, and that’s why at the CBI we’ve been so keen to champion workplace health initiatives – particularly in mental health – that can support people back into work.

With a General Election fast approaching, and the economy in need of a major pick-me-up, having access to more reliable labour market data is vital to charting a way forward for the country.

But for now, it’s clear that the labour market remains challenging for businesses.

Beckie Hart is CBI regional director for Yorkshire and Humber