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THREAD: Today’s @ONS statistics continue recent trends, with a general picture of a weakening labour market. (Note: this covers the period before the very latest restrictions were put in place.) (1/n)
Since March, the number of workers on payrolls has dropped by around three-quarters of a million, overall employment is falling and unemployment rising (up to 4.8% or 1.6m). (2/n)
Redundancies have risen sharply in recent months, and in the latest quarter reached an all-time record of around 315k in the three months to Sept. (These are people who have already been made redundant, so not an indicator of future job losses.) (3/n)
One group that seems to be bearing the brunt of this is younger workers, who are seeing some of the biggest falls in employment, down by around 300k since the start of the year. They also have the highest risk of redundancy. (4/n)
People who were furloughed/away from work have gradually returned to work over the summer and into autumn. Our latest figures, from our business survey, suggests around 8% of workers (2.5 million) people remain furloughed. (5/n)
We also still see around 200k people who tell us they are employed but temporarily away from work and not being paid. These people are counted as employed in our statistics. (See an earlier blog for a fuller discussion.) (6/n) https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/07/16/a-covid-19-conundrum-why-are-nearly-half-a-million-employees-not-being-paid/
The return from furlough means the hours of work are picking up again, and in turn this is boosting weekly wages, which are now growing again year on year after falling earlier in the pandemic. (7/n)
We are also seeing the number of vacancies – a measure of labour demand – picking up after big falls at the start of the pandemic. You can explore the latest data from @adzuna here: (8/n)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronavirustheukeconomyandsocietyfasterindicators/5november#online-job-adverts
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronavirustheukeconomyandsocietyfasterindicators/5november#online-job-adverts
A couple of other points… (9/n)
The split between those who are self-employed and employees remains a little unclear. The Labour Force Survey relies on people telling us their employment status, and reporting behaviour seems to have changed. (10/n)
This could be because of changes in the number of proxy responses and/or the Job Retention Scheme, etc. changing people’s perceptions of their employment status. So please be careful with changes in employee and self-employment numbers. (11/n)
The other aspect here is gender. While it is still early days, there is no evidence that women are – on average – faring less well than men in the labour market during the pandemic. (12/n)
If anything, it appears that men have been more affected in the labour market than women. Male employment has fallen by more, and in the early stages of the pandemic, it was men who were (a little) more likely to be furloughed on reduced wages. (13/n)
All today’s data is available here: (ENDS)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/uklabourmarketnovember2020
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/uklabourmarketnovember2020
