APS and Model based unemployment reweighting

Due to the COVID19 pandemic, all face-to-face interviewing for the Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey was suspended and replaced with telephone interviewing. This change in mode for first interviews has changed the non-response bias of the survey, affecting interviews from March 2020 onwards. More information can be found in an article on the ONS website.

APS estimates for April 2019 to March 2020 and July 2019 to June 2020 have been reweighted to account for this bias. Model based estimates of unemployment, which use APS estimates in its calculation, have also been reweighted.