Labour market in the regions of the UK: July 2021

Regional, local authority and Parliamentary constituency breakdowns of changes in UK employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other related statistics.

Nid hwn yw'r datganiad diweddaraf. Gweld y datganiad diweddaraf

This is an accredited National Statistic. Click for information about types of official statistics.

Cyswllt:
Email Bob Watson

Dyddiad y datganiad:
15 July 2021

Cyhoeddiad nesaf:
17 August 2021

1. Other pages in this release

Other commentary from the latest labour market data can be found on the following pages:

Reweighting

Labour Force Survey (LFS) responses have been reweighted to new populations derived using growth rates from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI), to allow for different trends during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The reweighting will give improved estimates of both rates and levels.

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2. Main points

  • For the first time since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, some regions have counts of payrolled employees above pre-coronavirus levels; While counts have followed similar patterns for all regions, the number of payrolled employees in June 2021 for the North East, North West, East Midlands and Northern Ireland were all above February 2020 levels.

  • Every region, except London, had their lowest number of payrolled employees in November 2020, while London did not have its lowest count until February 2021; London is the region that still has the furthest to recover, with payrolled employees still over 3% below pre-pandemic levels.

  • For the three months ending May 2021, the highest employment rate estimate in the UK was in the South East (77.7%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (70.3%); the North West saw the largest change compared with the previous year, with a decrease of 2.3 percentage points.

  • For the three months ending May 2021, the highest unemployment rate estimate in the UK was in London (6.5%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (3.6%); London and Wales both saw the largest change compared with the same period last year, with an increase of 1.2 percentage points.

  • For the three months ending May 2021, the highest economic inactivity rate estimate in the UK was in Northern Ireland (27.1%) and the lowest was in the South East (18.9%); The North West saw the largest change compared with the same period last year, with an increase of 1.8 percentage points.

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3. Latest headline estimates

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4. Regional labour market data

Headline Labour Force Survey indicators for all regions
Dataset HI00 | Released 15 July 2021
Headline labour market indicators from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for all the UK regions. These cover economic activity, employment, unemployment, and economic inactivity. Datasets HI01 to HI12 provide all regional level indicators for each region of the UK.

Claimant Count by unitary and local authority (experimental)
Dataset CC01 | Released 15 July 2021
Claimant Count for people resident in local and unitary authorities, counties, and regions of the UK.

Regional labour market summary
Dataset S01 | Released 15 July 2021
Labour market indicators for countries and regions of the UK, covering employment, unemployment, Claimant Count, and workforce jobs.

Local indicators for counties and local and unitary authorities
Dataset LI01 | Released 20 April 2021
Labour market indicators for local and unitary authorities, counties, and regions in Great Britain for a 12-month period.

Real Time Information statistics
Dataset Real Time Information statistics | Released 15 July 2021
Earnings and employment statistics from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI) (Experimental Statistics) seasonally adjusted.

All regional labour market datasets used in this bulletin are available on the Related data page.

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5. Glossary

Actual and usual hours worked

Statistics for usual hours worked measure how many hours people usually work per week. Compared with actual hours worked, they are not affected by absences and so can provide a better measure of normal working patterns. For example, a person who usually works 37 hours a week but who was on holiday for a week would be recorded as working zero actual hours for that week, while usual hours would be recorded as 37 hours.

Economic inactivity

People not in the labour force (also known as economically inactive) are not in employment but do not meet the internationally accepted definition of unemployment because they have not been seeking work within the last four weeks and/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.

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. A more detailed explanation is available in our guide to labour market statistics.

Local labour market indicators

Local labour market indicators cover employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and jobs density for sub-regional geographic areas such as local and unitary authorities, counties and regions in the UK for the most recent 12-month period available of the Annual Population Survey (APS). The jobs density of an area is the number of jobs per head, of resident population, aged 16 to 64 years.

Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI)

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 release is classed as Experimental Statistics as the methodologies used to produce the statistics are still in their development phase. As a result, the series are subject to revisions.

PAYE is the system employers and pension providers use to take Income Tax and National Insurance contributions before they pay wages or pensions to employees and pensioners. This publication relates to employees only and not pensioners.

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 (those in work plus those seeking and available to work) who are unemployed.

A more detailed glossary is available.

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6. Measuring the data

This bulletin relies on data collected from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), and the Annual Population Survey (APS) derived from it, the largest household survey in the UK.

Quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations and appropriate uses, is available in the LFS QMI. The LFS performance and quality monitoring reports provide data on response rates and quality-related issues.

Data for Northern Ireland, are available in full, in the Northern Ireland Labour Market Report on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) website. Local area statistics are available from Nomis.

Coronavirus

For information on how labour market data sources are affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, see the article published on 6 May 2020, detailing some of the challenges that we have faced in producing estimates.

An article published on 11 December 2020 compares our labour market data sources and discusses some of the main differences.

Labour Force Survey (LFS) responses have been reweighted to new populations using growth rates from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI), to allow for different trends during the coronavirus pandemic. The reweighting will give improved estimates of both rates and levels.

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7. Strengths and limitations

The estimates presented in this bulletin contain uncertainty. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) gathers information from a sample of households across the UK. The sample is designed to be as accurate as possible, given practical limitations. This can have an impact on how changes in the estimates should be interpreted, especially for short-term comparisons.

As the number of people in the sample gets smaller, the variability of the estimates that we can make from that sample gets larger. Estimates for small groups, which are based on small subsets of the sample, are less reliable and tend to be more volatile than for larger aggregated groups.

In general, changes in the numbers (and especially the rates) reported between three-month periods are small and are not usually greater than the level that is explained by sampling variability. Short-term movements in reported rates should be considered alongside longer-term patterns in the series and corresponding movements in other sources, for a fuller picture.

Information on the quality of estimates is available in our Labour Force Survey sampling variability.

The data in this bulletin follow internationally accepted definitions specified by the International Labour Organization (ILO). This ensures that the estimates for the UK are comparable with those for other countries.

The reconciliation report of job estimates article, which compares the latest Workforce Jobs estimates with the equivalent estimates of jobs from the LFS (published every March) has been postponed until further adjustments are made.

Reliability of the main indicators in this bulletin can be obtained by monitoring the size of revisions. These measures are available in the Regional Sampling variability and revisions summary.

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Manylion cyswllt ar gyfer y Bwletin ystadegol

Bob Watson
Labour.Supply@ons.gov.uk
Ffôn: +44 (0)1633 455070