Labour Market Overview: December 2024 (headline results)
Monthly data on employment, unemployment and economic inactivity.
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Introduction
This headline provides a summary of the latest key statistics relating to the Welsh labour market, and includes experimental statistics from HMRC’s Pay As You Earn Real Time Information and data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
Monthly paid employees and earnings from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) publish data for Wales on payrolled employees, mean pay, aggregate pay and single month estimates for median pay.
Paid Employees
Figure 1: Payrolled Employees, Wales, November 2019 to November 2024
Description of Figure 1: A line chart showing the trend in the number of paid employees over the past few years has been generally increasing despite a steep decrease between March 2020 and July 2020.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, ONS and HMRC
Early estimates for November 2024 indicate that the number of paid employees in Wales has increased by 800 (0.1%) over the month to 1.32 million.
At a UK level, early estimates for November 2024 showed a monthly decrease of 35,400 (0.1%).
Other detailed breakdowns of paid employees including by local authority, by age and by sector are published by the ONS.
Headline labour market indicators from the Labour Force survey, 3 months to October 2024
The ONS have published reweighted LFS estimates for Wales from January to March 2019, resulting in a step change in the data. The full impact of this reweighting will be detailed in an article published on Thursday 19 December on the Welsh Government website.
Confidence intervals for headline labour market rates are available on the ONS website. The latest data shows the only statistically significant change for headline labour market indicators in Wales for the three months to October 2024 was the annual change in the unemployment rate. This suggests that the other quarterly and annual changes for these indicators are unlikely to reflect a real change in the data.
Employment rate
Figure 2: Employment rate, 3 months to October 2014 to the 3 months to October 2024
Description of Figure 2: Line chart showing the employment rate in the UK has generally been higher than in Wales over the last 10 years.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of LFS
Wales
The employment rate in Wales was 70.6%. This is up 0.7 percentage points on the quarter and down 1.6 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK employment rate was 74.9%. This is up 0.1 percentage points on the quarter and unchanged on the year.
Unemployment rate
Figure 3: Unemployment rate, 3 months to October 2014 to the 3 months to October 2024
Description of Figure 3: Line chart showing the unemployment rate has decreased overall in both Wales and the UK over the last 10 years.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of LFS
Wales
The unemployment rate in Wales was 5.5%. This is up 1.4 percentage points on the quarter and up 2.4 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK unemployment rate was 4.3%. This is up 0.1 percentage points on the quarter and up 0.3 percentage points on the year.
Economic inactivity rate
Figure 4: Economic inactivity rate, 3 months to October 2014 to the 3 months to October 2024
Description of Figure 4: Line chart showing the economic inactivity rate has generally decreased in the UK over the last 10 years but has seen an overall increase since early 2020. In Wales, the rate has fluctuated over this time but generally remains above the UK rate.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of LFS
Wales
The economic inactivity rate in Wales was 25.2%. This is down 2.0 percentage points on the quarter and down 0.2 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK economic inactivity rate was 21.7%. This is down 0.2 percentage points on the quarter and down 0.2 percentage points on the year.
Further information
The ONS have highlighted that the challenges with maintaining response rates for the LFS continue to affect data quality despite the reweighting of the estimates in February 2024. LFS-based labour market statistics will be labelled as official statistics in development (Office for Statistics Regulation) until further review and we continue to recommend caution when interpreting this data.
We would recommend using the LFS data alongside the trends in other measures of the labour market, particularly Workforce Jobs (a quarterly measure of jobs), claimant count (the number of people claiming unemployment related benefits) and the RTI data from HMRC (the number of employees on payroll) to gain a clearer picture of the Welsh labour market.
Contact details
Statistician: Joe Davies
Email: labourmarket.stats@gov.wales
Media: 0300 025 8099