More trouble for the ONS as wage data arrives late

Britain's main measure of wage growth may need to be revised after a large employer failed to supply data on time, the Office for National Statistics warned yesterday.

- Joanna Partridge

In the latest sign of the agency's problems with collecting reliable economic figures, the agency issued a caveat on this month's average weekly earnings data.

It said that - "as an exception" - it was working on "opening up revisions further back in time".

This, the ONS added, would "allow for late and updated returns we received from one business to be included, as part of improving the quality of these estimates".

The ONS conceded that revisions from one unnamed employer could have a small impact at "a whole-economy level". The agency vowed to provide a full explanation when it published the revisions.