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

16th October 2024

Early estimates for September 2024 indicate that the number of payrolled employees rose by 0.4% compared with September 2023, a rise of 113,000 employees.

This annual increase was largest in the health and social work sector, a rise of 139,000 employees.

The number of payrolled employees was largely unchanged in September 2024 when compared with August 2024, decreasing slightly by 15,000 employees; figures for September should be treated as a provisional estimate and are likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for August 2024 compared with July 2024 has been revised from a decrease of 59,000 reported in the last bulletin to a decrease of 35,000; 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 September 2024 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 5.3% compared with September 2023.

Annual growth in median pay in September 2024 was highest in the wholesale and retail sector, with an increase of 8.2%, and lowest in the transportation and storage sector, with a decrease of 2.9%.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for September 2024 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a rise of 0.4% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a rise of 113,000 employees over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees was largely unchanged in September 2024, a decrease of 15,000 people.

This monthly change should be treated as provisional, because it is based on an early estimate of September 2024. More information on revisions can be found in Section 10: Data sources and quality.

When comparing the number of payrolled employees in August 2024 with the previous month, the number decreased by 0.1%. This is revised upwards from the early estimate of a 0.2% decrease reported in the September 2024 Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK bulletin.

Following a general trend of increasing pay growth between mid-2015 and mid-2018, pay growth tended to fluctuate around 3.6%, until 2020 when it became negative. This coincided with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and related economic and policy responses. From June 2020 median pay growth became positive again. Through 2022, the growth rate of median pay continued to increase in line with pre-pandemic trends, but with increasing volatility in late 2022 and into 2023. This pace of growth has slowed in 2024. Estimates reported in the September 2024 Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK bulletin, showed some unusual pay growth rates for February months, particularly for February 2024 and February 2020 for the seasonally adjusted series. In the latest figures, these numbers have been amended to reflect an improved seasonal adjustment model and now align more closely with estimates previously reported.

Pay distribution
In the three months to August 2024, the 10th percentile of the monthly pay distribution was £791, the 90th percentile was £5,508 and the 99th percentile was £15,567

See many more details and graphs at the full ONS report HERE