March Labour Market Statistics: Comment from the Institute for Employment Studies

IES News

23 Mar 2021

Commenting on this morning’s Labour Market Statistics, Tony Wilson, Director of the Institute for Employment Studies said:

"There’s good news and bad news in today’s jobs figures.  The good news is that a year on from the start, there are clear signs now that the labour market has started to turn the corner.  Payrolled employment has risen for three months in a row and it appears that unemployment may have peaked for now, at well under half of where many of us had feared it may have got to a year ago. But there is bad news today too, with the data showing that new hiring is continuing to fall back and all of the improvement is being driven by fewer people leaving work rather than more people getting new jobs.  This is proving to be a disaster for young people, who now account for nearly two thirds of the fall in employment and none of the recent growth."

Read the detailed IES Labour Market Statistics briefing note here