Earnings And Employment From Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, Uk - January 2024

17th January 2024

Early estimates for December 2023 indicate that the number of payrolled employees rose by 1.0% compared with December 2022, a rise of 306,000 employees.

This annual increase was largest in the health and social work sector, a rise of 203,000 employees.

Payrolled employment decreased by 24,000 employees (0.1%) in December 2023 when compared with November 2023; 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 November 2023 compared with October 2023 has been revised from a decrease of 13,000 reported in the last bulletin to an increase of 9,000; 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 December 2023 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 6.6% compared with December 2022.

Annual growth in median pay in December 2023 was highest in the transportation and storage sector, with an increase of 9.7%, and lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector, with an increase of 4.2%.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for December 2023 indicate that there were 30.2 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a rise of 1.0% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a rise of 306,000 people over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees decreased by 0.1 % in December 2023, a decrease of 24,000 people.

Note, this monthly change should be treated as provisional, because it is based on an early estimate of December 2023. More information on revisions can be found in Section 11: Strengths and limitations.

When comparing the number of payrolled employees in November 2023 with the previous month, the number showed no change, at 0%. This is no change from the early estimate of a 0% change reported in our previous bulletin, Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: December 2023.

Read the full ONS report HERE