This latest labour market update summarises the state of the UK labour market in the three months to September 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 207,000 people (0.7%) over the past month (up 1,008,000 people (3.6%) over the past year)
- All regions except London and Scotland are now above pre-pandemic levels
- The employment rate increased by 0.5% over the quarter to 75.3%
- The unemployment rate decreased by 0.4% over the quarter to 4.5%
- The economic inactivity rate decreased by 0.2% over the quarter to 21.1%
- Redundancies fell by 5,000 over the quarter to 99,000 (130,000 fewer than a year ago)
- Vacancies reached another record high of 1,102,000 during the quarter
- Within Electricity & Gas, the number of vacancies remained unchanged over the quarter, but were 73% higher than a year ago
- Within Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities, the number of vacancies increased by 30% over the quarter, and were 147% higher than a year ago
- Total hours worked increased by 39.9million over the quarter to 1.02billion hours
- Earnings growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was 7.2% and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 6.0%
- Taking into account the changed composition of the labour market during the pandemic, underlying regular pay increased by an estimated 4.1% to 5.6%
The next update will be on 16th November 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.