Labour Market Report January 2025

The latest labour market statistics were published today (21st January 2025) 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 December 2024 was 803,000, a decrease of 0.3% over the month and an increase 0.6% over the year.
Earnings data from HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,291 in December 2024, an increase of £2 (0.1%) over the month and an increase of £139 (6.5%) over the year.
The estimates from HMRC PAYE for the latest period, are based on provisional data and, therefore, are more likely to be subject to larger revisions.

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 2024 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 1.7%. This represents a decrease of 0.1 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 0.7pps over the year.
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 0.5pps over the quarter and increased by 0.2pps over the year to 72.6%.
The total number of weekly hours worked in NI was estimated at 30.3 million hours, an increase of 5.3% on the previous quarter and an increase of 2.6% 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) decreased by 0.4pps over the quarter and increased by 0.4pps over the year to 26.1%.

In December 2024, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 40,000 (4.1% of the workforce), a decrease of 1.4% from the previous month’s revised figure. The December 2024 claimant count remains 33.9% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 240 redundancies occurred in December 2024. Over the year January 2024 to December 2024, 1,840 redundancies were confirmed, which was approximately seventy percent of the figure for the previous year (2,600).
There were 2,980 redundancies proposed in the twelve months to December 2024, which was approximately seventy percent of the figure for the previous year (4,300).

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - January 2025 page.

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