UK unemployment rate falls

A continuing rise in employment and a further slowing in the rate of earnings growth (4.2% in the year to October) headlined last month’s statistics.

More are joining the workforce, especially as part-timers, just as wages are being eroded by rising prices. But less has been said about the decline in self-employed numbers.

Figures published at the end of last year showed another quarterly increase in the employment rate, to 75.5% (still 1.1 percentage points below its pre-pandemic level). The unemployment rate fell to 4.2% in the August-October period, which encompassed the end of furlough (still 0.2 percentage points higher than before the pandemic).

However, there has been a 588,000 drop in self-employment jobs since before the pandemic, from 4.615 million in December 2019 to 4.103 million in September 2021.

Andy Chamberlain, director of policy at the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed said: “The impacts of Covid have reversed a long-standing trend of increasing self-employment and this has been compounded by government policy such as the changes to the IR35 [tax] rules which have forced many out of business.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment