Labour Market Profile - November 2021 - EU Skills

Labour Market Profile – November 2021

This latest labour market update summarises the state of the UK labour market in the three months to October 2021. It is based on data published by the Office for National Statistics.

Labour Market Profile - November 2021
Labour Market Profile – November 2021

This latest labour market update summarises the state of the UK labour market in the three months to October 2021. It is based on data published by the Office for National Statistics.

The headlines include:

  • The most recent data show the labour market continuing to recover
  • Payrolled employees increased by 160,000 people (+0.5%) over the past month (up 1,139,000 people (+4.0%) over the past year)
    • All regions except London are now above pre-pandemic levels
  • The employment rate increased by 0.4% over the quarter to 75.4%
  • The unemployment rate decreased by 0.5% over the quarter to 4.3%
  • The economic inactivity rate remained unchanged over the quarter at 21.1%
  • Redundancies increased by 5,000 over the quarter to 104,000 (213,000 fewer than a year ago)
  • Vacancies reached another record high of 1,172,000 during the quarter
    • Within Electricity & Gas, the number of vacancies increased by 5.4% over the quarter (up 74% over the year)
    • Within Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities, the number of vacancies increased by 35% over the quarter (up 143% over the year)
  • Total hours worked increased by 25.2 million over the quarter to 1.026 billion hours
  • Earnings growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was 5.8% and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 4.9%
    • In real terms (adjusted for inflation), total and regular pay are now growing at a faster rate than inflation, at 3.1% for total pay and 2.2% for regular pay

The Office for National Statistics’ full update on the state of the labour market in November 2021 can be found here.

The next update will be on 14th December 2021.

For further information about the labour market, migration or regional labour market indications, please email Rob Murphy, our in-house strategic workforce planning consultant.