Labour Market Profile – December 2021

The most recent data show the labour market continuing to recover from the impact of coronavirus pandemic:

• Payrolled employees increased by 257,000 people (+0.9%) over the past month (up 1,353,000 people (+4.8%) over the past year)
  • All regions are now above pre-coronavirus (February 2020) levels
• The employment rate increased by 0.2% over the quarter to 75.5%
• The unemployment rate decreased by 0.4% over the quarter to 4.2%
• The economic inactivity rate increased by 0.1% over the quarter to 21.2%
• Redundancies fell by 7,000 over the quarter to 97,000 (280,000 fewer than a year ago)
• Vacancies reached another record high of 1,219,000 during the quarter
  • Within Electricity & Gas, the number of vacancies fell by 1.7% over the quarter (63% up over the year)
  • Within Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities, the number of vacancies increased by 42% over the quarter (up 158% over the year)
• Total hours worked increased by 17.6 million over the quarter to 1.024 billion hours
• Earnings growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was 4.9% and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 4.3%
  • In real terms (adjusted for inflation), total and regular pay continue to grow at a faster rate than inflation, at 1.7% for total pay and 1.0% for regular pay

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

The next update will be on 18^th January 2022.

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