Finding economic stats and data at ONS and Bank of England

Quick links for main economic statistics

Bank of England data

Other data

• EU Unemployment rate | ECB

Readers Questions: I’m pretty good at finding data at FRED. But I have no luck finding what I want at ONS. Do you have a post on that? Or some guidelines that might help me? Would be great!

It’s a good question. I’ve spent the past four years finding my way around the ONS database and website (and updating links the last time they changed URLs). I’ve spent many hours looking for certain statistics. The good news is that nearly all the important ones are there, if you dig hard enough. Though some data like exchange rates, bond yields, interest rates and money supply you will need Bank of England database.

Sometimes it’s frustrating because all you want is the % change in real GDP, and you have to wade through statistics on S.A Output in fishing and forestry.

A few points.

1. If you get stuck, ONS have been very helpful in pointing out to me the relevant page. So it might be worth using the contact page, if you do get stuck
2. Sometimes, the hardest thing is knowing where to find a statistic. For example, finding the savings ratio was difficult, because it’s not intuitive you need to look in National accounts – Household sector – saving ratio
3. In some cases, other sources of data are better, e.g. for housing I still think Nationwide is better than the ONS, though the ONS seem to be giving housing more importance.
4. It’s also worth checking out:

• OECD,
• IMF,
• World Bank, 
• ECB stats

Tips on getting data

I subscribe to the ONS RSS feed so I can see when new publications come out.

• e.g. public finances March 2013
• e.g. GDP Q1 2013

Selecting datasets

In recent releases, you often only get data from the past 3-5 years. But, I usually want data going back 10 or 20 years. Suppose we want real economic growth.

The trick is to

1. click on data menu tab.
   
2. Then type GDP and search in datasets and timeseries
3. Then look for most recent quarterly national accounts datasets, and click on ‘Select Series from this dataset‘ http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/data-selector.html?dataset=qna
4. This brings you to a series of data tables, you can select

To get real GDP, you need to know real GDP is C2: GDP at chained volume measure.

(In the past, I’ve spent considerable time looking for real GDP, rather than looking for GDP at chained volume measure)

Then from the final series, you can select different measures of real GDP, which go back to 1955

• ABMI
• IHYP
• IHYQ

Main Data Series and (where to find them)

• Economic growth – raw data National income accounts | real GDP | % change quarterly |
• Inflation – raw data inflation time series | CPI annual % change at ONS
• Unemployment – raw data Labour market data | ILO unemployment % rate at ONS
• Current account Balance of Payments – raw data (pnbp at ONS)
• Budget deficit – raw data at (HM Treasury psf statistics) | (psf at ONS)
• Public sector debt – raw data at (psf at ONS) (debt as % of GDP)
• Labour productivity – raw data (Labour productivity prdy dataset)
• Saving Ratio – raw data in national income accounts: J3 Households sector – NRJS household savings
• Business investment – ONS business investment
• Housing market – Nationwide data | house price index at ONS
• UK wage growth – -raw data average weekly earnings at ONS
• Industrial and manufacturing output – raw data industrial production at ONS

Bank of England data

• UK Bond yields – raw data Bank of England 10 year bond yields – I choose monthly average
• Exchange rates – raw data Bank of England Sterling exchange rate
• Money supply raw data at: (BM4 at B of E)