This latest labour market update summarises the state of the UK labour market in the three months to April 2023. It is based on data published by the Office for National Statistics.
Whilst the situation regarding redundancies and vacancies in the UK economy worsened compared to the last quarter, all other labour market indicators improved.
- The number of payrolled employees decreased by 0.5% over the past month to 29.8 million (up 1% over the year)
- The employment rate increased by 0.2% over the quarter to 75.9% (up 0.3% over the year)
- The unemployment rate increased by 0.1% over the quarter to 3.9% (down 0.2% over the year)
- The economic inactivity rate fell by 0.4% over the quarter to 21% (down 0.4% over the year)
- There were 81,000 redundancies during the quarter – 18,000 fewer than the previous quarter (but 11,000 more than a year ago)
- The number of vacancies fell by 4.9% over the quarter to 1,083,000 (down 16.5% over the year)
- In the Electricity & Gas industries, the number of vacancies increased by 18% over the quarter (up 11.3% over the year) to around 6,000
- In the Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities industries, the number of vacancies fell by 1.5% over the quarter (down by 24.7% over the year) to around 7,000
- Total hours worked increased by 16.3 million hours over the quarter to 1.052 billion hours (up 8.4 million hours over the year)
- Earnings growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was up 5.8% and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was also up 6.7%
- Average regular pay growth for the private sector was up 7%
- Growth in total and regular pay fell in real terms (adjusted for inflation) over the year by 3% for total pay and 2% for regular pay
The Office for National Statistics’ full update on the state of the labour market in May 2023 can be found here.
The next update will be on 13 June 2023.
For further information about the labour market, migration or regional labour market indications, please email Rob Murphy, our in-house strategic workforce planning consultant.