Labour Market Report November 2022

Date published: 15 November 2022

The latest labour market statistics were published today (15th November 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 October 2022 was 781,300, a 0.2% increase over the month and a 2.5% increase over the year. When considering the annual change in employees by industry sector, the largest percentage increase over the year was recorded in the ‘Information and communication’ (9.2%) sector.
Earnings from the HMRC PAYE indicated that NI employees had a median monthly pay of £1,967 in October 2022, an increase of £10 (0.5%) over the month and an increase of £117 (6.3%) over the year.

In October 2022, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 36,100 (3.8% of the workforce), which was an increase of 1.4% from the previous month’s revised figure. The October claimant count remains higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020 (by 21.1%).

NISRA, acting on behalf of the Department for the Economy, received confirmation that 60 redundancies occurred in October 2022, taking the annual total to 940, the lowest annual total in our time series (since 2000).
Over the year November 2021 to October 2022, 1,290 redundancies were proposed.

The latest NI seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (the proportion of economically active people aged 16 and over who were unemployed) for the period July-September 2022 was estimated from the Labour Force Survey at 3.0%. This was an increase of 0.3 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and a decrease of 1.3pps over the year. The annual change was statistically significant.
The proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) increased by 0.4pps over the quarter and increased by 2.0pps over the year to 70.1%. Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant. The total number of weekly hours worked in NI (26.5 million) decreased by 4.7% over the quarter and increased by 1.7% 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 0.6pps over the quarter and by 1.0pps over the year to 27.7%. Neither the quarterly nor annual changes were statistically significant.

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