Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information UK September 2025

16th September 2025

Early estimates for August 2025 indicate that the number of payrolled employees was 30.3 million, which is a fall of 0.4% from August 2024; this is equivalent to 127,000 fewer employees.

The largest increase was in the health and social work sector, with a rise of 80,000 employees; the largest decrease was in the accommodation and food service activities sector, with a fall of 90,000 employees.

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

UK payrolled employee growth for July 2025 compared with June 2025 has been revised from a decrease of 8,000 reported in the last bulletin to a decrease of 6,000; 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 August 2025 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 6.6%, compared with August 2024.

Annual growth in median pay in August 2025 was highest in the health and social work sector, with an increase of 11.0%; it was lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector, with an increase of 3.3%.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for August 2025 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a decrease of 0.4% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a decline of 127,000 employees over the 12-month period. The number of payrolled employees was largely unchanged in August 2025, compared with the previous month, which is a decrease of 8,000 people.

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

The number of payrolled employees in July 2025 was largely unchanged, compared with the previous month.

Read the full ONS report HERE