December Labour Market Statistics: Comment from the Institute for Employment Studies
13 Dec 2022
Commenting on today's figures, Tony Wilson, Director at the Institute for Employment Studies said:
"Today’s figures are broadly flat overall. Employment remains around three hundred thousand below where it was before the pandemic, while economic inactivity is more than half a million higher. However there are also growing signs today that the labour market may be starting to slow down. Vacancies are now down by nearly ten per cent from their peak in the summer, short term unemployment is now at its highest since summer 2021 and redundancies are creeping up again, rising to their highest in a year. It should be stressed that by historic standards vacancies remain very high and both unemployment and redundancies are very low, but it’s also clear that we’ll be entering this downturn in far worse shape than we entered the last, both fiscally and economically.
"Nonetheless there are things that we can do quickly to help more people back into jobs and to work better with employers to fill their posts. There are still three million people out of work who want a job, but our work has shown that less than a quarter are engaged with Jobcentre Plus. So we need to do far more to broaden access to support for more of those who are out of work and want a job, and particularly those who have been out for more than a year. This means improving access to Jobcentre Plus and to programmes like the Restart Scheme, and bringing forward planned investment in the Shared Prosperity Fund. Employers need to do far more too, particularly to make work more flexible by default and to recruit in different ways.”
Read the detailed IES Labour Market Statistics briefing note here.