Labour Market Report September 2024

The latest labour market statistics were published today (10th September 2024) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employees decreased over the month and median earnings increased

The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in August 2024 was 805,600, a decrease of 0.1% over the month and a 1.8% increase over the year.
Earnings data from HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,328 in August 2024, an increase of £78 (3.5%) over the month and an increase of £237 (11.3%) 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.

In August 2024, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 41,600 (4.2% of the workforce), an increase of 2.7% from the previous month’s revised figure. The August 2024 claimant count remains 39.3% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.These increases are largely due to the increase in the administrative earnings threshold for Universal Credit in May 2024.

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 110 redundancies occurred in August 2024. Over the year September 2023 to August 2024, 2,550 redundancies were confirmed, which was two-thirds higher than the figure for the previous year (1,530).
There were 2,760 redundancies proposed in the twelve months to August 2024, which was around seventy percent of the figure for the previous year (4,000).

The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period May-July 2024 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.0%. This was a decrease of 0.2 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 0.6pps over the year.
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) decreased by 0.2pps over the quarter and increased by 1.2pps over the year to 71.1%.
The total number of weekly hours worked in NI was estimated at 28.4 million hours, an increase of 0.5% on the previous quarter and an increase of 3.6% on the equivalent period last 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 0.8pps over the year to 27.5%.

Businesses reported that employee jobs increased over the quarter (0.2%) and increased over the year (1.2%) to 826,130 jobs in June 2024.

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

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