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

14th October 2025

Early estimates for September 2025 indicate that the number of payrolled employees was 30.3 million, which is a fall of 0.3% from September 2024; this is equivalent to 100,000 fewer employees.

The largest increase was in the health and social work sector, with a rise of 45,000 employees; the largest decrease was in the accommodation and food service activities sector, with a fall of 59,000 employees.

Payrolled employment decreased by 10,000 employees (0.0%) in September 2025, compared with August 2025; figures for September should be treated as provisional estimates and are likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

UK payrolled employee growth for August 2025 compared with July 2025 has been revised from a decrease of 8,000 reported in the previous bulletin to an increase of 10,000; this is because of the incorporation of additional real time information (RTI) submissions into the statistics, which takes place for every release and reduces the need for imputation.

Early estimates for September 2025 indicate that median monthly pay increased by 5.5%, compared with September 2024.

Annual growth in median pay in September 2025 was highest in the transportation and storage sector, with an increase of 8.0%; it was lowest in the professional, scientific and technical sector, with an increase of 3.0%.

Payrolled employees
Early estimates for September 2025 indicate that there were 30.3 million payrolled employees (Figure 1), a decrease of 0.3% compared with the same period of the previous year. This is a decline of 100,000 employees over the 12-month period. Compared with the previous month, the number of payrolled employees was largely unchanged in September 2025, a decrease of 10,000 people.

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

When comparing the number of payrolled employees in August 2025 with the previous month, the figure 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: September 2025.

Read the full ONS report HERE