Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: August 2025

12th August 2025

Early estimates for July 2025 indicate that the number of payrolled employees was 30.3 million, which is a fall of 0.5% from July 2024; this is equivalent to 164,000 fewer employees.

The largest increase was in the health and social work sector, with a rise of 67,000 employees; the largest decrease was in the accommodation and food service activities sector, with a fall of 108,000 employees.

Payrolled employment decreased by 8,000 employees (0.0%) in July 2025, compared with June 2025; figures for July should be treated as provisional estimates and are likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for June 2025 compared with May 2025 has been revised from a decrease of 41,000 reported in our previous bulletin to a decrease of 26,000; this is because of the incorporation of additional real time information (RTI) submissions into the statistics, which takes place for every publication and reduces the need for imputation.

Early estimates for July 2025 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 5.7%, compared with July 2024.

Annual growth in median pay in July 2025 was highest in the public administration and defence sector, with an increase of 8.6%; it was lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector, with an increase of 4.0%.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for July 2025 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a decrease of 0.5% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a decline of 164,000 employees over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees was largely unchanged in July 2025, a decrease of 8,000 employees.

This monthly change should be treated as provisional, because it is based on an early estimate of July 2025. More information on revisions can be found in Section 9: Data sources and quality.

The number of payrolled employees in June 2025 decreased by 0.1% compared with the previous month. There is no change from the early estimate of a 0.1% decrease reported in the previous Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: July 2025 bulletin.

Read the full ONS report HERE