Jobholders up but pay erratic


The number of payrolled employees continues to increase and there have been falls in the unemployment and economic inactivity rates. 


But overall, employment is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, due to the fall in self-employment.


Meanwhile, the data on average weekly earnings have been erratic. Average “total pay”, which includes bonuses, rose from 5.8% in February to 9.9% in March but was back at 4.8% in April. There was no such “blip” in the annual growth in regular pay excluding bonuses (4.3% in March). 


The UK employment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 75.6%. Full-time employee numbers increased to a record high, while the number of part-time employees fell. 


The 21.3% economic inactivity rate (people aged 16-64 not in the labour force but who don’t meet the definition of unemployment) represents 8.8 million. 


Numbers increased during the pandemic but have now fallen among those aged 16-24. 


The 3.8% unemployment rate represents 1.3 million, including people without a job who have been “actively seeking work in the past four weeks and are available to start work in the next two weeks” or have found a job and are waiting to start in the next two weeks.