Labour Market Report August 2022

The latest labour market statistics were published today (16th August 2022) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employee numbers have increased for the eleventh consecutive month

The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in July 2022 was 779,300, a 0.4% increase over the month and 2.6% over the year. This is the highest on record and the eleventh consecutive monthly increase.
Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,963 in July 2022, an increase of £2 (0.1%) over the month and an increase of £89 (4.7%) over the year.

In July 2022, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 35,700 (3.8% of the workforce), which is a decrease of 0.5% from the previous month’s revised figure. The July claimant count remains higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020 (by 20%).

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 50 redundancies occurred in July 2022, taking the annual total to 1,160. Over the year August 2021 to July 2022, 1,260 redundancies were proposed.
The latest twelve month totals of both proposed and confirmed redundancies were around 80% lower than the previous year and the lowest in the time series (since 2000).

The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period April-June 2022 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.7%. This was an increase of 0.1 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 1.6pps over the year. The annual change was statistically significant.
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) decreased by 0.9pps over the quarter and increased by 1.0pps over the year to 69.7%. Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant. The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (27.8 million) decreased by 0.7% over the quarter and increased by 4.9% 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) increased by 0.8pps over the quarter and by 0.2pps over the year to 28.3%. Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - August 2022 page.

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