Labour Market Report September 2025
Date published:
The latest labour market statistics were published today (16th September 2025) by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.
Payrolled employees and median earnings increased over the year
- The number of employees receiving pay through HMRC PAYE in NI in August 2025 was 810,100, a decrease of 0.1% over the month and an increase 0.4% over the year.
- Earnings data from HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £2,371 in August 2025, unchanged over the month and an increase of £67 (2.9%) over the year.
- The estimates from HMRC PAYE for the latest period are based on early data and, therefore, are more likely to be subject to larger revisions.
Labour Force Survey 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 May-July 2025 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 2.2%. This represents an increase of 0.4 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and an increase of 0.4pps over the year.
- The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 0.1pps over the quarter and decreased by 0.9pps over the year to 71.8%.
- The total number of weekly hours worked in NI was estimated at 29.3 million hours, a decrease of 3.4% on the previous quarter and unchanged from the equivalent period last 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 0.4pps over the quarter and increased by 0.6pps over the year to 26.5%.
Seasonally adjusted claimant count rate unchanged over the month
In August 2025, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,200 (3.7% of the workforce), which was unchanged from the previous month’s revised figure. The August 2025 claimant count is 21.3% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.
Latest annual total of confirmed redundancies lower than previous year
- NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 170 redundancies occurred in August 2025. Over the year, September 2024 to August 2025, 2,430 redundancies were confirmed, which was approximately ninety-five percent of the figure for the previous year (2,550).
There were 130 proposed redundancies in August 2025, taking the annual total to 3,080, which was over ten percent higher than the figure for the previous year (2,760).
Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) headline measures
- Businesses reported that employee jobs increased over the quarter (0.4%) and increased over the year (2.5%) to 842,740 jobs in June 2025.
The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Labour Market Report - September 2025 page.