Labour market overview, UK: May 2025

• Average weekly earnings in Great Britain

• Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK

• Employment in the UK

• Labour market in the regions of the UK

• Vacancies and jobs in the UK

Latest data

Estimates for payrolled employees in the UK decreased by 47,000 (0.2%) between February and March 2025 and fell by 63,000 (0.2%) between March 2024 and March 2025.

Payrolled employees fell by 53,000 (0.2%) over the quarter and fell by 4,000 (0.0%) over the year, when looking at January to March 2025. This is the period comparable with our Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates.

The early estimate of payrolled employees for April 2025 decreased by 33,000 (0.1%) on the month and decreased by 106,000 (0.3%) on the year to 30.3 million. The April 2025 estimate should be treated as a provisional estimate and is likely to be revised when more data are received next month.

LFS estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of recent improvements in LFS data collection and sampling methods introduced from January 2024, and are therefore more likely to be representative of labour market conditions. An increased amount of volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving those periods. We recommend using LFS estimates as part of our suite of labour market indicators, alongside Workforce Jobs, Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.

The UK employment rate for people aged 16 to 64 years was estimated at 75.0% in January to March 2025. This is above estimates of a year ago, but largely unchanged in the latest quarter.

The UK unemployment rate for people aged 16 years and over was estimated at 4.5% in January to March 2025. This is above estimates of a year ago, and up in the latest quarter.

The UK economic inactivity rate for people aged 16 to 64 years was estimated at 21.4% in January to March 2025. This is below estimates of a year ago, and down in the latest quarter.

The UK Claimant Count for April 2025 increased on the month and the year, to 1.726 million.

The estimated number of vacancies in the UK fell by 42,000 on the quarter, to 761,000 in February to April 2025. This was the 34th consecutive quarterly decline with quarterly falls seen in 13 out of the 18 industry sectors. Vacancies were 34,000 below their January to March 2020 level.

Annual growth in employees' average regular earnings excluding bonuses in Great Britain was 5.6% in January to March 2025, and annual growth in total earnings including bonuses was 5.5%. RTI pay data showed a similar annual growth rate when compared with Average weekly earnings total earnings, including arrear payments.

Annual growth in real terms, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH), was 1.8% for regular pay and 1.7% for total pay in January to March 2025.

Annual growth in real terms, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index excluding owner occupiers' housing costs (CPI), was 2.6% for both regular pay and total pay in January to March 2025.

There were an estimated 55,000 working days lost because of labour disputes across the UK in March 2025.

Alongside the labour market publication this month we are publishing an article on LFS quality, including coherence. The timing of this quality article coincides with the first period of data incorporating the full impact of some of the larger changes made from January 2024, now fully reflected in estimates for January to March 2025.  The article provides information about current response rates, trends and known biases in LFS data and provides users with information to better understand the current quality of the data.

View all related data on our related data page.

Alternatively, Nomis provides free access to the most detailed and up-to-date UK labour market statistics.

Average weekly earnings

Average weekly earnings (AWE) is calculated using information based on the Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey (MWSS).

AWE measures money paid by employers to employees in Great Britain before tax and other deductions from pay. The estimates are not just a measure of pay rises, because they also reflect, for example, changes in the overall structure of the workforce. More high-paid jobs in the economy would have an upward effect on the earnings growth rate.

Economic inactivity

People not in the labour force are not in employment but do not meet the internationally accepted definition of unemployment. This is because they have not been seeking work within the last four weeks or they are unable to start work in the next two weeks. The economic inactivity rate is the proportion of people aged between 16 and

64 years who are not in the labour force. The Labour Force Survey estimates are official statistics in development.

Employment

Employment measures the number of people in paid work or who had a job that they were temporarily away from (for example, because they were on holiday or off sick). This differs from the number of jobs because some people have more than one job. The employment rate is the proportion of people aged between 16 and 64 years who are in employment. The Labour Force Survey estimates are official statistics in development.

Unemployment

Unemployment measures people without a job who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks. The unemployment rate is not the proportion of the total population who are unemployed. It is the proportion of the economically active population (people in work and those seeking and available to work) who are unemployed. The Labour Force Survey estimates are official statistics in development.

Claimant Count

The Claimant Count is an official statistic in development that measures the number of people who are receiving a benefit principally for the reason of being unemployed. Currently, the Claimant Count consists of those receiving Jobseeker's Allowance and Universal Credit claimants in the "searching for work" conditionality group.

Vacancies

Vacancies are defined as positions for which employers are actively seeking recruits from outside their business or organisation. The estimates are based on the Vacancy Survey. This is a survey of businesses designed to provide estimates of the stock of vacancies across the economy, excluding agriculture, forestry and fishing (a small sector for which the collection of estimates would not be practical).

Pay As You Earn Real Time Information

These data come from HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC's) Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI) system. They cover the whole population, rather than a sample of people or companies, and they will allow for more detailed estimates of the population. The PAYE RTI statistics are official statistics in development (previously called experimental statistics) because the methodologies used to produce the statistics are still in their development phase.

In June 2023, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published an assessment report of HMRC and Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics on earnings and employment from PAYE RTI. HMRC and the ONS developed an action plan for focusing on the six requirements and published an update on progress on 9 December 2024.

A more detailed glossary is available in our Guide to labour market statistics methodology.

The estimates presented in this bulletin contain uncertainty. For more information, see our Uncertainty and how we measure it methodology.

Information on revisions is available in our Labour market statistics revisions policy.

Information on the strengths and limitations of this bulletin is available in Section 13 of our Labour market overview, UK: April 2021 bulletin.

Further information is available in our Guide to labour market statistics methodology.

Accredited official statistics

On 7 June 2024, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) introduced the new accredited official statistics badge, to denote official statistics that have been independently reviewed by the OSR. Accredited official statistics comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

This UK labour market bulletin includes a combination of accredited official statistics and official statistics in development (until September 2023, these were called "experimental statistics"). Read more about the change in our Guide to official statistics in development.

The following labour market outputs are accredited official statistics:

• Labour disputes (rapid review completed by the OSR in February 2023)

• Vacancy statistics (reviewed by the OSR in April 2022)

• Workforce Jobs (WFJ) (reviewed by the OSR in April 2022)

The following labour market outputs are official statistics in development:

• Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates Office for National Statistics (ONS)

• Claimant Count

• Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI)

Labour Force Survey

We have been facing the challenge of falling response rates for household surveys, as have other comparable countries. This issue became more acute in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data collected for August 2023. The LFS estimates due to be published in October 2023 were suspended because of quality concerns. We developed a comprehensive plan to address these concerns and reintroduce LFS, as described in our Labour Force Survey: planned improvements and its reintroduction methodology. We reinstated reweighted LFS estimates into our monthly publication from February 2024, as described in our Impact of reweighting on LFS key indicators: 2024 article. In December 2024, we carried out a further LFS reweighting exercise, based on 2022 mid-year estimates. 

Reweighting increased the levels of all labour market statuses but did not address issues surrounding increased LFS volatility, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes. LFS estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of recent improvements in data collection and sampling methods introduced from January 2024 and are therefore more likely to be representative of labour market conditions. An increased amount of volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving those periods. We recommend using LFS estimates as part of our suite of labour market indicators, alongside Workforce Jobs, Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.

We are continuing to improve the quality of the LFS, building on our work to date. This has led to an increase in achieved dataset size, from 63,069 individuals in October to December 2024, to 69,847 individuals in January to March 2025, as shown in our LFS performance and quality monitoring report: January to March 2025. 

More information on LFS quality can also be found in our LFS quality article.

Coherence of data sources

Understanding coherence challenges around our employment indicators continues to be a priority.

In April 2025, we published an update on our work on reconciling estimates of employment from the LFS and WFJ. This work makes several adjustments to both LFS and WFJ estimates to try and account for known differences in concepts, coverage and measurement.

LFS reweighting has improved the coherence picture, as strong population growth in recent years is now incorporated into our estimates of all three labour market statuses.

We are also considering how best to consider coherence between HM Revenue and Customs's (HMRC's) PAYE RTI data and WFJ. As the former is essentially focused on employees, we recommend comparison with the employee jobs component of WFJ to align coverage of populations. One other important difference is that the RTI statistics published each month are a measure of people, rather than jobs, as in WFJ.

Our Comparison of labour market data sources methodology compares data sources and discusses some of the main differences.

More information on Coherence of our labour market data sources can also be found in our LFS quality article.

Labour market transformation

We have provided an update on the transformation of labour market statistics in our Labour market transformation - update on progress and plans: April 2025 article.

We welcome your feedback on this latest update and our plans. Please email us at labour.market. transformation@ons.gov.uk to tell us what you think.

Coronavirus

For more information on how labour market data sources were affected by the coronavirus pandemic, see our Coronavirus and the effects on UK labour market statistics article.

Making our published spreadsheets accessible

Following the Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidance on releasing statistics in spreadsheets, we will be amending our published tables over the coming months to improve the usability, accessibility and machine readability of our published statistics. To help users change to the new formats, we will be publishing sample versions of a selection of our tables and, where practical, initially publish the tables in both the new and current formats. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at labour.market@ons.gov.uk.

Revisions

In line with international guidance, the Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) seasonal adjustment process has been reviewed this month, with all periods open to revision. This is an annual process, as outlined in our Average weekly earnings quality and methodology information (QMI). The review leads to revisions to the historical AWE time series, extending back throughout the entire time series. The impact of these revisions on the headline estimates can be found in our dataset EARN09: Average Weekly Earnings revisions triangle.

In the May 2025 publication, Claimant Count levels have been revised back to January 2022 because of a seasonal adjustment review, with denominators revised back to 2013, which may cause revisions to rates.