Earnings And Employment From Pay As You Earn Real Time Information UK - May 2023

16th May 2023

Early estimates for April 2023 indicate that the number of payrolled employees rose by 1.0% compared with April 2022, a rise of 297,000 employees; the number of payrolled employees was up by 2.9% since February 2020, a rise of 838,000.

Payrolled employment decreased by 136,000 employees (0.5%) in April 2023 when compared with March 2023; this is the first fall in total payrolled employees since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, though this should be treated as a provisional estimate and is likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for March 2023 compared with February 2023 has been revised from an increase of 31,000 reported in the last bulletin to an increase of 42,000, 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 2023 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 7.4% compared with April 2022, and increased by 20.1% when compared with February 2020.

Between April 2022 and April 2023, there was a decrease of 44,000 payrolled employees aged under 25 years; during the same period, payrolled employees aged 35 to 49 years increased by 121,000.

For Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) 3 regions, annual growth in payrolled employees in April 2023 was the highest in Luton, with a rise of 3.5%, and was lowest in Westminster, with a fall of 1.2%.

The increase in payrolled employees between April 2022 and April 2023 was largest in the health and social work sector, a rise of 154,000 employees, and smallest in the wholesale and retail sector, with a fall of 62,000.

This month, NUTS1 regions are further broken down by sectors in the supporting datasets for this bulletin; some sectors show similar growth rates to the region level, while others, such as accommodation and food service activities, and transportation and storage, show moderate regional variation.

Annual growth in median pay for employees in April 2023 was highest in the other service activities sector, with an increase of 9.9%, and lowest in the accommodation and food service activities sector, with an an increase of 5.2%.

Read the full report HERE