Labour Market In The Regions Of The UK - November 2024

12th November 2024

Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates have been affected by increased volatility, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes. This means that estimates of change should be treated with additional caution, and we recommend using them as part of our suite of labour market indicators alongside Workforce Jobs (WFJ), Claimant Count data, and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.

The longer-term broad coherence between WFJ and RTI when looking at annual change suggests that these sources are likely to be providing a more reliable read on employment, particularly for employees; these sources continue to indicate that we have seen a sustained moderation of growth in employment over the last year.

Despite these coherence challenges, the LFS continues to be the sole source of data for unemployment, economic inactivity and self-employment, and provides a range of breakdowns that are only possible from LFS data.

As external sources are suggesting that recent increases in LFS measures of employment are likely to be overstating underlying employment growth, we expect that underlying changes in the other labour market statuses will also be impacted; the more modest growth we see in alternative employment sources may indicate that unemployment and/or economic inactivity have moved less than the LFS has recently suggested.

LFS estimates have been weighted to population estimates published in November 2023 for periods from July to September 2022; headline UK seasonally adjusted series before this have been modelled, but other series, including regional, have a discontinuity at this point.

In July to September 2024, the highest employment rate in the UK was in the South West (78.8%) and the lowest was in Wales (70.0%), the highest unemployment rate was in London (5.9%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (2.0%), and the highest economic inactivity rate was in Northern Ireland (28.2%) and the lowest was in the South West (18.2%). Scotland was 3.3%.

Comparing October 2024 with the same period last year, changes in the number of payrolled employees ranged from a 1.1% increase in Northern Ireland, to a 0.1% decrease in London.

Read the full ONS report HERE