STATISTICS might often be perceived as rather dry and dull but they also tell you that, in Jersey, there has been no increase in wages in real terms over the last 25 years, 40% of the Island’s £7 billion economy is attributable to the finance industry, and the price of an average house is 13% lower than it was at the beginning of 2022.
On the face of it, that information is definitely worth knowing.
On Wednesday, business leaders attending the latest Chamber of Commerce lunch were treated to a plateful of important data served by the Island’s chief statistician Ian Cope – with the message that their contribution to the various surveys that independent body Statistics Jersey compile is essential for decision making.
Statistics Jersey is the Island’s statistics office and produces economic, population, and social data that forms the basis of important policies and decisions, such as the level of minimum wage, and how much rents, pensions and benefits will go up by.
Its various reports also capture elements including business sentiment, the size and type of population, our sense of wellbeing and how much trust we hold in institutions.
Mr Cope said: “In my view, the reason we produce statistics is to help people make better decisions, which includes businesses as well as government. But they need to know that the data exists, which is why our new website is so important.”
He added: “To illustrate the relevance of what we do, at the moment we are working with the States Greffe, which will soon produce profiles for all of the electoral constituencies based on our data, which will tell both voters and election candidates about the characteristics of their local neighbourhood.
“It is data which is already out there but we have repackaged it for the districts, which includes breaking St Helier down to its three election parts. It should provide an interesting insight into the various constituencies and a helpful tool for those seeking to represent them.”
Mr Cope added that one of the decisions that the next Assembly would have to make is to decide what type of Census Jersey wants to run in 2031 – whether the Island sticks with the current UK-style snapshot format or follows Guernsey’s ‘Rolling Electronic Census’, which is based on an ongoing capture of existing administrative data.
Mr Cope said that that would be a political decision – and could involve a ‘hybrid model’ involving a survey sitting alongside tapping into existing information.
Following a Guernsey model, he said, would mean missing out on such data as educational attainment, occupation, ethnicity, sexual orientation and long-term limiting illnesses.
However, he added that Statistics Jersey was still keen to make use of more administrative data, not least because it was already out there so cheaper than conducting new surveys.
As an example, he said that accessing immigration data had revealed that the number of Jersey residents with temporary work permits had increased from 80 people at the end of 2020, pre-Brexit, to 1,740 at the end of 2024.
In terms of Statistic Jersey’s future work, Mr Cope said that his office was keen to use more local data when it came to capturing the impact of mortgage interest on the Retail Price Index, as this was currently based just on Bank of England variable rates.
His team also planned to investigate the use of supermarket till data to increase the number of price points that feed into the quarterly RPI figure, and the use of rental data – which can now be captured under the Residential Tenancy Law – in the House Price Index and RPI.
