Labour Market Report August 2023

The latest labour market statistics were published today (15th August 2023) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employees and monthly earnings increased over the month

The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in July 2023 was 793,000, a 0.4% increase over the month and a 1.9% increase over the year.
Earnings data from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,103 in July 2023, unchanged over the month and an increase of £147 (7.5%) over the year.
When considering the annual change in employees by industry to July 2023, increases were recorded within the services (2.2%), manufacturing (1.3%) and other industries (1.3%) sectors. However, the count of employee jobs in the construction sector remained unchanged.

In July 2023, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 37,000 (3.8% of the workforce), an increase of 1.7% from the previous month’s revised figure. The July 2023 claimant count remains 23.8% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 40 redundancies occurred in July 2023. Over the year August 2022 to July 2023, 1,340 redundancies were confirmed, 11.3% more than in the previous 12 months.
There were 250 proposed redundancies in July 2023, taking the annual total to 4,370, almost three and a half times the total for the previous year (1,260).

The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people age 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period April-June 2023 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.7%. This was an increase of 0.2 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and was unchanged from the same period last year.
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) decreased by 0.6pps over the quarter and increased by 1.7pps over the year to 71.4%.
The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (28.7 million) decreased by 0.8% over the quarter and increased by 2.9% 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 0.4pps over the quarter and decreased by 1.8pps over the year to 26.6%.

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - August 2023 page.

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