Labour Market Profile – January 2022

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

• There were 29.47 million Payrolled employees – an increase of 184,000 (+0.6%) over the previous month (and up 1,340,000 (+4.8%) over the previous year)
• The employment rate increased by 0.2% over the quarter to 75.5%
• The unemployment rate decreased by 0.4% over the quarter to 4.1%
• The economic inactivity rate increased by 0.2% over the quarter to 21.3%
• Redundancies fell by 21,000 over the quarter to 78,000 (323,000 fewer than a year ago)
• Vacancies reached another record high of 1,247,000 during the quarter
  • In the Electricity & Gas industry, the number of vacancies fell by 3% during the quarter (up 78% over the year) to c6,000
  • In the Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities industry, the number of vacancies increased by 16% during the quarter (up 166% over the year) to c9,000
• Total hours worked fell 2.6% over the quarter to 1.018 billion hours (though still up 45 million over the previous year)
• Earnings growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was 4.2% and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 3.8%
  • In real terms (adjusted for inflation), total and regular pay have shown minimal growth over the quarter, at 0.4% for total pay and 0.0% for regular pay

The Office for National Statistics’ full update on the state of the labour market in January 2022 can be found here.

The next update will be on 15^th February 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.