Employment and unemployment
Employment is up on the quarter by 0.1 percentage points to a rate of 74.9%. These figures are derived from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and come with a caveat from the ONS regarding the accuracy of the statistics as a result of the difficulties in gathering a sufficiently robust number of responses. However, the estimated number of payrolled employees, derived from HMRC data, suggests a fall of 22,000 (0.1%) individuals.
The rate of unemployment for those aged 16 and above has increased by 0.1 percentage points, to a rate of 4.3% (1.5 million individuals). This rate remains below the 5% metric that economists typically use to measure the health of the labour market. The claimant count, which includes individuals who receive Universal Credit and Jobseekers Allowance, has also risen, to 1.7 million. The rise in redundancies may also be contributing to the observed increase in unemployment (see below for more details).
Economic inactivity
Inactivity has seen a slight dip of 0.2 percentage points to a rate of 21.7%. This is largely due to a decrease of 46,000 in the number of those looking after a family home and a decrease of 35,000 in the number of those who are classified as long-term sick.
The decrease in economic inactivity may explain the respective increases in employment and unemployment. Those 67,000 people who were previously inactive are now either in work or looking for work, therefore placing them in the employed or unemployed categories.
Vacancies and redundancies
Vacancies fell for the 29th consecutive period by 31,000 to 818,000 between September and November. This remains above pre-pandemic levels.
Redundancies have increased by 0.4% this quarter. This uptick in redundancies could be linked to the poor performance of the economy overall. According to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures released recently by the ONS, the economy shrank over two consecutive months, with GDP falling by 0.1% in September and 0.1% in October.
Taken together, the latest figures suggest that while the labour market remains tight overall, there are signs of slackening from the increase in unemployment and the heightened number of redundancies.
