Labour Market Report July 2022

The latest labour market statistics were published today (19th July 2022) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employee numbers have increased for the tenth consecutive month

The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in June 2022 was 775,400, a marginal increase (less than 0.1%) over the month and an increase of 2.8% over the year. This is the highest on record and the tenth consecutive monthly increase.
Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,960 in June 2022, an increase of £16 (0.8%) over the month and an increase of £123 (6.7%) over the year.

In June 2022, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,100 (3.8% of the workforce), which is an increase of 0.1% from the previous month’s revised figure. This slight increase over the month to June is the first reported increase since February 2021. The June claimant count remains higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020 (by 21%).

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 40 redundancies occurred in June 2022. At 1,360, the annual total was the lowest figure in the time series.
There were 470 proposed redundancies in June 2022, the highest number proposed this year. Over the year July 2021 to June 2022, 2,080 redundancies were proposed, 71% less than in the previous 12 months.

The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period March-May 2022 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.6%. This was a decrease of 0.4 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and 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) increased by 0.7pps over the quarter and by 2.7pps over the year to 70.1%. The annual change was statistically significant. The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (28.0 million) increased by 6.2% over the quarter and by 9.9% 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) decreased by 0.4pps over the quarter and by 1.6pps over the year to 28.0%. Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.

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

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