Labour Market Report January 2023

The latest labour market statistics were published today (17th January 2023) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employees and monthly earnings recorded an increase over the month

• The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in December 2022 was 783,800, a 0.2% increase over the month and a 2.0% increase over the year.
• Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,021 in December 2022, an increase of £7 (0.3%) over the month and an increase of £119 (6.3%) over the year.

Fourth consecutive monthly increase in the claimant count

• In December 2022, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,900 (3.9% of the workforce), which was an increase of 2.1% from the previous month’s revised figure.  The December 2022 claimant count remains higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020 by 23.9%.

Lowest twelve-month total of confirmed redundancies in time series

• NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 80 redundancies occurred in December 2022, taking the annual total to 730, the lowest annual total in the time series.
• 80 redundancies were proposed in December 2022.  Over the year January to December 2022, 1,570 redundancies were proposed.

Statistically significant changes in Labour Force Survey (LFS) employment and economic inactivity rates

• The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period September-November 2022 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.8%.  This was a decrease of 0.3 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 0.8pps over the year.  Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.
• The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 1.4pps over the quarter and by 3.3pps over the year to 71.3%.  The annual change was statistically significant.  The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (28.5 million) increased by 6.9% over the quarter and by 4.3% 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 1.2pps over the quarter and by 2.8pps over the year to 26.6%.  The annual change was statistically significant.

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

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