Labour Market Overview: March 2025 (headline results)
Monthly data on employment, unemployment and economic inactivity.
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Introduction
This headline provides a summary of the latest main 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, February 2020 to February 2025
Description of Figure 1: A line chart showing the trend in the number of paid employees has been relatively stable over the last year following a steady increase since 2021.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, ONS and HMRC
Early estimates for February 2025 indicate that the number of paid employees in Wales has increased by 700 (0.1%) over the month to 1.32 million.
At a UK level, early estimates for February 2025 showed a monthly increase of 20,500 (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 January 2025
Confidence intervals for headline labour market rates are available on the ONS website. The latest data shows there were no statistically significant changes for headline labour market indicators in Wales for the three months to January 2025. This suggests that the 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 January 2015 to the 3 months to January 2025
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 69.9%. This is down 0.7 percentage points on the quarter and down 0.1 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK employment rate was 75.0%. This is up 0.1 percentage points on the quarter and up 0.3 percentage points on the year.
Unemployment rate
Figure 3: Unemployment rate, 3 months to January 2015 to the 3 months to January 2025
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 5.4%. This is down 0.1 percentage points on the quarter and up 1.2 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK unemployment rate was 4.4%. 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 January 2015 to the 3 months to January 2025
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 26.0%. This is up 0.8 percentage points on the quarter and down 1.0 percentage points on the year.
UK
The UK economic inactivity rate was 21.5%. This is down 0.2 percentage points on the quarter and down 0.6 percentage points on the year.
Further information
The ONS published reweighted LFS estimates for Wales in December 2024 from the period January to March 2019, resulting in a step change in the data. The full impact of this reweighting is detailed in the article ‘Impact of reweighting on Labour Force Survey key indicators in Wales: December 2024’, available alongside the December 2024 Labour Market Overview.
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 December 2024 (ONS). LFS-based labour market statistics will continue to 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