Labour Market Report December 2022

Date published: 13 December 2022

The latest labour market statistics were published today (13th December 2022) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

Payrolled employees and monthly earnings recorded an increase over the month

• The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in November 2022 was 783,500, a 0.3% increase over the month and a 2.4% increase over the year.
• Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,999 in November 2022, an increase of £23 (1.2%) over the month and an increase of £140 (7.5%) over the year.

Third consecutive monthly increase in the claimant count

• In November 2022, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,200 (3.8% of the workforce), which was an increase of 1.2% from the previous month’s revised figure.  The November claimant count remains higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020 by 21.4%.

Lowest twelve-month total of confirmed redundancies in time series

• NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 50 redundancies occurred in November 2022, taking the annual total to 850.
• 200 redundancies were proposed in November 2022, following low or no redundancies in October. Over the year December 2021 to November 2022, 1,490 redundancies were proposed.

Statistically significant changes in all three Labour Force Survey (LFS) headline measures

• The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period August-October 2022 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.7%.  This was a decrease of 0.2 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 1.2pps over the year.  The annual change was statistically significant.
• The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 1.7pps over the quarter and increased by 2.9pps over the year to 71.3%.  Both the quarterly and annual changes were statistically significant.  The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (27.7 million) increased by 1.3% over the quarter and increased by 2.7% over the year.
• The economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 who were not working and not seeking or available to work) decreased by 1.6pps over the quarter and by 2.0pps over the year to 26.7%.  The quarterly change was statistically significant.

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - December 2022 page.