Earnings And Employment From Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, Uk: April 2022

13th April 2022

The Office for National Statistics report shows the increase in payrolled employees.


Main points
Early estimates for March 2022 indicate that the number of payrolled employees rose by 4.9% compared with March 2021, a rise of 1,376,000 employees; the number of payrolled employees was up by 1.9% since February 2020, a rise of 544,000.

There were 35,000 more people in payrolled employment in March 2022 when compared with February 2022.

UK payrolled employee growth for February 2022 compared with January 2021 has been revised from an increase of 275,000 reported in the last bulletin to an increase of 174,000; this is a result of incorporating additional real time information (RTI) submissions into the statistics, reducing the need for imputation (which takes place every publication); as early estimates have a higher level of imputation, revisions of this scale are within expectation.

Early estimates for March 2022 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 6.0% compared with March 2021 and increased by 11.2% when compared with February 2020.

All age groups saw an increase in payrolled employees between March 2021 and March 2022; there was an increase of 585,000 payrolled employees aged under 25 years.

For Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 regions, annual growth in payrolled employees in March 2022 was the highest in Tower Hamlets, with a rise of 13.0%, and was lowest in the Orkney Islands, with a rise of 1.6%.

The increase in payrolled employees between March 2021 and March 2022 was largest in the accommodation and food service activities sector (a rise of 374,000 employees) and smallest in the finance and insurance sector (a rise of 1,000).

Annual growth in median pay for employees in March 2022 was highest in the finance and insurance sector (an increase of 19.7%), and lowest in the arts and entertainment sector (an increase of 1.6%).

Annual growth rates for March 2022 are compared with March 2021, and so the reduction in employees and median pay seen following the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is no longer contributing to the annual growth rate. Annual growth rates are now compared with this lower baseline.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for March 2022 indicate that there were 29.6 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a rise of 4.9% compared with the same period of the previous year. This means a rise of 1,376,000 people over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees increased by 0.1% in March 2022, which is equivalent to 35,000 people. The early estimate for March 2022 shows the first fall in the annual growth rate since early 2021 but still shows a relatively high growth.

When comparing the number of payrolled employees in February 2022 with the previous month, the number increased by 0.6%. This is revised down from the early estimate of a 0.9% increase.

Read he full report at https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/earningsandemploymentfrompayasyouearnrealtimeinformationuk/april2022