unemployment rate: Estimates of the number of registered employees in the UK decreased by 8,000 (0.0%) between January and February 2025, but increased by 35,000 (0.1%) between February 2024 and February 2025.
The number of registered employees in the UK decreased by 21,000 (0.1%) during the quarter, but increased by 50,000 (0.2%) over the year, when looking at the period from December 2024 to February 2025. This period is similar to our Labor Force Survey (LFS) estimates.
Preliminary estimates of the number of registered employees in the UK for March 2025 decreased by 78,000 (0.3%) during the month, and by 70,000 (0.2%) over the year, to 30.3 million. The March 2025 estimate is seen as a provisional estimate and is likely to be revised as more data comes in next month.
The increased volatility of the LFS, resulting from the small size of the samples achieved. Means that estimates of change need to be approached with greater caution. We recommend using them as part of our set of labor market indicators, along with Labor Force Jobs (WFJ) data, number of claimant data, and income pay-as-you-go (RTI) estimates.).
The UK employment rate for people aged 16 to 64 was estimated at 75.1% from December 2024 to February 2025. That’s higher than last year’s estimate, and higher in the fourth quarter.
The UK unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over was estimated at 4.4% from December 2024 to February 2025. That’s higher than last year’s estimate, but largely unchanged in the fourth quarter.
The UK’s economic inactivity rate for people aged 16 to 64 was estimated at 21.4% from December 2024 to February 2025. That’s lower than last year’s estimate and down in the fourth quarter.
Job vacancies decline and higher unemployment claims
The number of UK unemployment claims for March 2025 increased month-on-month to 1.766 million. The estimated number of UK job vacancies decreased by 26,000 during the quarter, to 781,000 in January-March 2025. After revising the figure for December 2024 to February 2025, which was the thirty-third consecutive quarterly decline.
The number of vacancies decreased by 15,000 from January-March 2020. This is the first time since March to May 2021 that the number of vacancies has fallen below its pre-COVID-19 level. Which led to increased unemployment.
In this release, we have exceptionally revised our average weekly earnings starting in October 2020 to incorporate late and updated returns we received from a company and to improve the quality of estimates. The annual growth in average regular earnings for employees, excluding bonuses. In Great Britain was 5.9% from December 2024 to February 2025. And the annual growth in gross earnings, including bonuses, was 5.6%. Wage data under the Right to Information Act (RTI) showed) is a similar annual growth rate compared to average weekly earnings (gross earnings). Including late payments.
Annual growth in real terms, adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index. Including occupancy housing costs (CPIH), was 2.1% for regular wages and 1.9% for gross wages, from December 2024 to February 2025.
Workforce jobs are published for March, June, September, and December. For presentation purposes, they are graphed against the middle month of the time period shown. For example, data for September is plotted against the period from August to October. An estimated 52,000 working days lost due to labor disputes were found across the UK in February 2025.
Different employment indicators and modern comparison challenges
In this section, we provide additional feedback to help users evaluate the different data sources we publish about employment and unemployment claims and related indicators.
There isa breakdown of annual growth rates for a selection of our different employment indicators. Where annual growth rates provide a more stable and longer-term view of changes.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a survey of households. While the Labor Force Jobs Survey (WFJ) is primarily based on business surveys related to employee jobs, covering the jobs of the self-employed. Real-time indicator (RTI) data for customs revenues and taxes (PAYE) is derived) of administrative tax records, covering only salaried employees.
Each of these three sources is combined and processed in different ways. So we expect differences in levels (e.g., jobs versus individuals, different reference periods). Divergent trends between individual periods are also possible. More details on how these different sources can best be compared under “Data Source Consistency” in Section 7: Data Sources and Quality, and in the Methodology for Comparing labor Market Data Sources.
Employees on the payroll show decreasing year-on-year growth, similar to employee job growth. But the Labor Force Survey (LFS) shows stronger growth thanks to the fundamentalist effects.
Annual growth rates, employment indicators, seasonally adjusted, UK, December 2022 to February 2023, and December 2024 to February 2025.
We have faced ongoing challenges in assessing the correlation between these statistics in recent periods. Annual growth ranges from 0.2% for registered employees to 1.8% for LFS, depending on recent datasets. LFS still impacted by increased volatility and base effects, as we compare them to periods of lower response rates. Annual growth of RTI and WFJ staff jobs Generally consistent over the past two years, however. The WFJ is showing stronger annual growth in the most recent available period.
