Labour Market Report April 2024

The latest labour market statistics were published today (16th April 2024) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employees decreased over the month

• The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in March 2024 was 799,600, a 0.2% decrease over the month and a 1.3% increase over the year.
• Earnings data from HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,158 in March 2024, an increase of £5 (0.2%) over the month and £49 (2.3%) over the year. 
• The estimates from HMRC PAYE for the latest period, are based on early data and, therefore, are more likely to be subject to larger revisions.

Claimant Count Rate remains relatively stable since April 2022

• In March 2024, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,700 (3.8% of the workforce), an increase of 1.7% from the previous month’s revised figure.  The March 2024 claimant count remains 22.8% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.

Proposed and Confirmed redundancies considerably higher than the previous year

• NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 200 redundancies occurred in March 2024.  Over the year April 2023 to March 2024, 2,480 redundancies were confirmed, which was more than double the figure for the previous year (1,070). 
• There were 70 proposed redundancies in March 2024, taking the annual total to 3,890, which was almost double the previous year (2,190).

Labour Force Survey headline measures

• The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period December-February 2024 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.2%.  This was a decrease of 0.4 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and of 0.2pps from the same period last year. 
• The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 1.1pps over the quarter and by 0.9pps over the year to 71.7%.
• The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (27.7 million) decreased by 2.6% over the quarter and increased by 0.3% over the year.
• The economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 who were not working and not seeking or available to work) decreased by 0.8pps over both the quarter and the year to 26.7%.

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - April 2024 page.

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