Labour market indicators

More strikes and higher earnings growth were the two headline-grabbing trends last month.

Working days “lost” to strikes rose to 467,000 in November, the highest figure since November 2011.

Private sector pay (regular earnings) grew by 7.2%. Public sector earnings growth edged up too, but was still far behind the private sector at 3.3%.

There was much less change to be seen in the overall employment rate (75.6%). Within that, though, there was a decrease in full-time self-employed workers, more or less balanced by an increase in part-time self-employed workers and employees.

Numbers “economically inactive” fell (see page 26). And there was a 28,000 increase in the number of payrolled employees (compared with the revised November 2022 figure), taking the total to 29.9 million and well above pre-pandemic levels.

However, the redundancy rate was up at 3.4 per thousand employees, consistent with reports of jobs being lost in sectors like media, tech and retail.

The unemployment rate was up too, by 0.2 percentage points to 3.7%.

More had been unemployed for up to 12 months (especially young people) but fewer for more than 12 months.

The number of vacancies fell but remained high at 1,161,000.