The British government has launched an investigation into the Office for National Statistics. Last month the ONS found errors in some numbers that underpin its GDP calculations, and investors no longer trust its monthly jobs report. The episode hints at a wider trend: global economic data have become alarmingly poor.

GDP revisions in the European Union are far bigger than just before the covid-19 pandemic. In 2024 America’s statisticians revised their third estimate of monthly job growth, relative to their first, by 48,000 on average—much higher than in the 2010s.

The second issue is people’s relationship with the state. The average response rate to a crucial population survey produced by the BLS has fallen from 88% to 69% in the past decade. Canadians are 15% less likely to respond to a labour-force survey than pre-covid. Over the past decade the response rate to Britain’s labour-force survey has gone from 48% to 20%.

partisanship clouds their answers. This is a particular problem in America. Just before the presidential election 42% of Democrats believed that the economy was getting better, whereas just 6% of Republicans did. Today 6% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans respond in the same manner.