Labour market overview: July 2021

Monthly data on employment, unemployment and economic inactivity.

Headline labour market indicators, 3 months to May 2021

The headline labour market indicators estimated from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) provide an indication of how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting the labour market. Other data sources, such as the number of paid employees presented later in this headline, can also be used to produce a more complete picture.

The LFS is not designed to measure changes in the levels of population or long-term international migration. To allow for different trends during the pandemic the responses for the LFS have been reweighted on the 15 July 2021 to new populations derived using growth rates from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI). The reweighting has been applied from January to March 2020 onwards and gives improved estimates of both rates and levels. Office for National Statistics have published an article explaining the reweighting methodology in detail.

The impact of the LFS reweighting is small on all headline labour market indicators (employment, unemployment and economic inactivity) for Wales for both rates and levels.

Employment rate

Wales

The employment rate in Wales was 73.6%. This is 0.4 percentage points up on the quarter and 0.6 percentage points down on the year.

UK

The UK employment rate was 74.8%. This is up slightly on the quarter and down 1.0 percentage points on the year.

Unemployment rate

Wales

The unemployment rate in Wales was 3.9%. This is down by 1.0 percentage points over the quarter and up by 1.2 percentage points on the year.

UK

The UK unemployment rate was 4.8%. This is 0.2 percentage points down on the quarter and 0.7 percentage points up on the year.

Economic inactivity rate

Wales

The economic inactivity rate in Wales was 23.4%. This is 0.4 percentage points up on the quarter and 0.4 percentage points down on the year.

UK

The UK economic inactivity rate was 21.3%. This is up slightly on the quarter and up 0.5 percentage points on the year.

Monthly paid employees and earnings from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information

The Office for National Statistics and HM Revenue & Customs publish data for Wales on payrolled employees, mean pay, aggregate pay and single month estimates for median pay.

Paid employees

The number of paid employees has generally increased in recent years, but fell during the pandemic. The number of paid employees began increasing again at the end of 2020 and is now similar to the pre-pandemic level.

Early estimates for June 2021 indicate that the number of paid employees in Wales has increased by 15,700 (1.3%) over the month to 1.26 million. This is the largest monthly increase since the series began in 2014, and an increase of 35,900 since the lowest point during the pandemic in November 2020.

Early estimates for June 2021 at a UK level also showed the largest monthly increase since the series began in 2014.

Reports