Office for National Statistics

The UK's national statistical institute

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) presents itself as the UK's largest independent producer of official statistics and as the recognised national statistical institute of the United Kingdom. Its website is organised as a public data portal rather than a commercial service, grouping statistics under broad domains such as business, industry and trade; the economy; employment and the labour market; and people, population and community.

The site is published in English (EN) and Welsh (CY), and all content is made available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated.

Headline indicators published on the site

The home page gathers a set of main figures drawn from the ONS time series explorer. At the time of writing this profile, the figures shown were:

• Employment rate for people aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted (May to July 2026): 75.1%, down 0.1 percentage points on the previous year.
• Unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over, seasonally adjusted (May to July 2026): 4.9%, up 0.2 percentage points on the previous year.
• CPIH 12-month rate for August 2026: 3.3%, up 0.2 percentage points on the previous month.
• GDP quarter on quarter for April to June 2026: 0.5%, down 0.1 percentage points on the previous quarter.
• UK population, mid-year estimate for 2025: 69,483,900.

Each indicator is linked to an analysis page and to the underlying data.

Statistical domains covered

The navigation of the site sets out the areas in which the ONS publishes data and analysis. These include business, industry and trade (with sections on changes to business, construction, the digital economy, international trade, manufacturing and production, retail and tourism); the economy (economic output and productivity, environmental accounts, government, public sector and taxes, GDP, GVA, inflation and price indices, investments, pensions and trusts, national accounts and regional accounts); and employment and the labour market, divided between people in work and people not in work.

A further block covers people, population and community: armed forces community, births, deaths and marriages, crime and justice, cultural identity, education and childcare, elections, health and social care, household characteristics, housing, leisure and tourism, measuring progress and well-being beyond GDP, personal and household finances, and population and migration.

Local data, releases and census work

The site offers a tool to find, compare and visualise statistics about places within the UK, and a release calendar that lists all releases by date. It also provides access to data and analysis from Census 2021 and sets out plans for Census 2031.

Tools and programmes featured

Among the initiatives highlighted on the site are a shopping comparison tool showing how the average prices of hundreds of shopping items are changing; a guide to data, statistics and the ONS in video form; material on how to use statistics produced by government and devolved administrations; a quarterly update on the surveys and economic statistics improvement plan; a collection of official statistics available from across government; the Navigating Numbers education programme, with free classroom-ready toolkits and teachers' CPD resources; and the Secure Research Service, presented as a way for ONS secure data to support research projects.

Participation in surveys

The site includes a dedicated section for people invited to take part in a survey, which the ONS describes as more important than ever.