Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information UK - May 2025

13th May 2025

Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that the number of payrolled employments was 30.3 million, a fall of 0.3% from April 2024; this is equivalent to 106,000 fewer employees.

The largest increase was in the health and social work sector, a rise of 87,000 employees; the largest decrease was in the accommodation and food services sector, a fall of 107,000 employees.

Payrolled employment decreased by 33,000 employees (0.1%) in April 2025, when compared with March 2025; figures for April should be treated as provisional estimates and are likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for March 2025 compared with February 2025 has been revised from a decrease of 78,000 reported in the previous bulletin to a decrease of 47,000; this is because of the incorporation of additional real time information (RTI) submissions into the statistics, which takes place every publication and reduces the need for imputation.

Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 6.4% compared with April 2024.

Annual growth in median pay in April 2025 was highest in the accommodation and food service activities sector (8.5%) and lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector (4.6%).

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a change of 0.3% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a decline of 106,000 employees over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees decreased by 0.1% in April 2025, a decrease of 33,000 people.

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1.Main points
Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that the number of payrolled employments was 30.3 million, a fall of 0.3% from April 2024; this is equivalent to 106,000 fewer employees.

The largest increase was in the health and social work sector, a rise of 87,000 employees; the largest decrease was in the accommodation and food services sector, a fall of 107,000 employees.

Payrolled employment decreased by 33,000 employees (0.1%) in April 2025, when compared with March 2025; figures for April should be treated as provisional estimates and are likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for March 2025 compared with February 2025 has been revised from a decrease of 78,000 reported in the previous bulletin to a decrease of 47,000; this is because of the incorporation of additional real time information (RTI) submissions into the statistics, which takes place every publication and reduces the need for imputation.

Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 6.4% compared with April 2024.

Annual growth in median pay in April 2025 was highest in the accommodation and food service activities sector (8.5%) and lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector (4.6%).

About the data in this bulletin
Early estimates for April 2025 are provided to give an indication of the likely level of employees, as well as median pay in the latest period. These early estimates are, on average, based on around 85% of information being available. They are of lower quality and will be subject to revision in next month's bulletin when between 98% and 99% of data will be available. A revisions triangle is available for employees and median pay at the UK level.

Statistics in this bulletin are based on people who are employed in at least one job paid through Pay As You Earn (PAYE), and monthly estimates reflect the average of such people for each day of the calendar month. These estimates are formed using a methodology for monthly earnings and employment estimates designed to align with international guidelines for labour market statistics.anchor_1)Amended to streamline the main point, as you already note that the figures represent growth.

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2.Payrolled employees
Early estimates for April 2025 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a change of 0.3% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a decline of 106,000 employees over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees decreased by 0.1% in April 2025, a decrease of 33,000 people.

This monthly change should be treated as provisional, because it is based on an early estimate of April 2025. More information on revisions can be found in Section 9: Data sources and quality.

The number of payrolled employees in March 2025 decreased by 0.2% compared with the previous month. This figure has been revised upwards from the early estimate of a 0.3% decrease reported in the Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: April 2025 bulletin.


Figure 1: The number of payrolled employees shows little change since January 2024
Payrolled employees, seasonally adjusted, UK, July 2014 to April 2025
Payrolled employeesFlash estimateApr 2025Apr 2023Apr 2021Apr 2019Apr 2017Apr 201526,000,00027,000,00028,000,00029,000,00030,000,00031,000,000Payrolled employees
Dec 2024
● Payrolled employees: 30,406,217
Source: Pay As You Earn Real Time Information from HM Revenue and Customs
Notes:
The latest period, highlighted in orange, is based on early data and therefore is more likely to be subject to slightly more substantial revisions.

The March 2025 figure is not a flash estimate of payrolled employees. This is included purely for graphing purposes.
Download this chartFigure 1: The number of payrolled employees shows little change since January 2024

Annual growth in the number of employees remained broadly within a range of 1.0% to 1.5% from mid-2016 until 2019. Growth rates before mid-2016 were higher than 1.5% (Figure 2). Starting around early 2019, employee growth began a slight downward trend. However, employee growth slowed more substantially past March 2020, coinciding with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, becoming negative in April 2020.

At the start of 2021, growth rates began to recover and remained high as the labour market recovered from the effects of the pandemic. From April 2022 the annual growth rate has been falling. Through 2022 this fall was partially caused by the comparison with the increase in employee numbers from March 2021, which levelled off as we no longer compared against this higher baseline. However, growth rates then continued to decrease throughout 2023 and 2024.

Read the full ONS report HERE