Labour Market Trends: December 2024

Data and Methodology

All estimates presented are sourced from the Labour Force Survey, a survey of households collected and published by the Office for National Statistics with the exception of those in the HMRC payrolled employees, HMRC earnings, and Claimant count sections.

Labour Force Survey

Revisions

ONS have reweighted Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates. These are official statistics in development. On 3 December 2024, ONS published an article outlining how the estimates have been affected by reweighting. These estimates were included in the main ONS release on 17 December 2024.

The reweighted LFS estimates incorporate information on the size and composition of the UK population, based on 2022 mid-year estimates. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2021-based National Population projections, published in January 2024. For Scotland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2020-based National Population Projections, published in January 2023.

Given time constraints, ONS have only been able to reweight LFS estimates from January to March 2019 onwards. Therefore, the reweighting exercise creates a discontinuity between December 2018 to February 2019 and January to March 2019 where there will be a step change in LFS estimates. However, the seasonally adjusted UK levels of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity by sex and age-band have been modelled back to June to August 2011 to ensure that headline rates and levels by sex and age-band (datasets A02SA and A05SA) can be assessed without a discontinuity.

Reweighting takes account of more recent population estimates but does not address issues surrounding the increased volatility in the LFS data, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes. An increased amount of volatility will remain until the recent improvements that have been implemented to increase response levels and the size of datasets fully feed through the survey. Therefore ONS continue to advise caution when interpreting changes in headline rates and recommend using them as part of their suite of labour market indicators, alongside Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.

The longer-term solution remains the replacement of the Labour Force Survey with the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS).

Labour Market Transformation

ONS are transforming the LFS. They have published a Labour market transformation article providing an update on the transformation of labour market statistics.

ONS also welcome any feedback on this latest update and their plans. Please email them at labour.market.transformation@ons.gov.uk to tell them what you think.

HMRC RTI

This release covers people paid through the HMRC’s Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system where their pay is reported through the Real Time Information (RTI) system.

Information presented in this release are experimental monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings. It includes UK and geographical regions (NUTS1) early estimates of payrolled employment and median pay for the most recent month.

Statistics in this release are based on people who are employed in at least one job paid through HMRC’s PAYE system and the monthly estimates reflect the average for each day of the calendar month.

The publication and background information can be accessed on the ONS website.

Claimant Count

The experimental Claimant Count consists of claimants of Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) and some Universal Credit (UC) Claimants. The UC claimants that are included are 1) those that were recorded as not in employment (May 2013-April 2015), and 2) those claimants of Universal Credit who are required to search for work, i.e. within the Searching for Work conditionality regime as defined by the Department for Work & Pensions (from April 2015 onwards). The denominator for the claimant count rate is the claimant count plus workforce jobs. Estimates included in this publication are seasonally adjusted.

Commencing in May 2024, the Department for Work and Pensions are rolling out an increase in the administrative earnings threshold for full work search conditionality. This change is likely to affect around 180,000 claimants in the UK over a period of around 6 months, increasing the Claimant Count over that time.

Where can labour market data for Scotland be accessed

Labour Force Survey estimates for Scotland are also published on Nomis

This release follows the ONS monthly release of Regional Labour Market Statistics in the UK

A range of Labour Market Statistics for Scotland are also published by the Office for National Statistics

Scottish Government Labour Market Statistics

• Scotland's Labour Market Insights (published on 28 October 2024) is a quarterly publication summarising employment, unemployment and economic inactivity estimates sourced from a range of official labour market statistics for Scotland and the UK.
• The Labour market data for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland is sourced from the ONS Annual Population Survey (July 2023 to June 2024) and is published quarterly (last published on 11 September 2024).

Other SG labour market publications from the ONS Annual Population Survey:

• Disabled people in the labour market in Scotland: January to December 2022
• Job-related training in Scotland: January to December 2022
• Labour Market Statistics for Scotland by Ethnicity: January to December 2021
• Scotland's Labour Market: People, Places and Regions – Protected Characteristics. Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2021
• Supporting documents - Scotland's Labour Market: People, Places and Regions – Protected Characteristics. Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2021

Other SG labour market publications

• Quarterly Public Sector Employment Q3 2024
• Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2024
• Topical publications