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

IES News

16 Nov 2021

Commenting on today’s Labour Market Statistics, IES Director Tony Wilson said:

“We’ve never seen jobs being filled at a faster rate than now, with three quarters of a million people starting a new job every month since Covid restrictions were eased.  Yet despite this we’re seeing labour shortages across all parts of the economy and a tighter jobs market than at any time in at least fifty years.  All told, we’ve nearly a million workers now missing from the labour market, and their absence is now holding back our recovery and adding to inflation.  There’s little sign in today’s data that these problems are being driven by furlough or even Brexit.  Instead they’re mainly being caused by older people who lost their jobs not going back to work as well as by more young people staying in education.  These problems aren’t going to fix themselves in the near future, and we’re still doing nowhere near enough to help get people back into work, particularly for older workers, disabled people and parents.”

Read the detailed IES Labour Market Statistics briefing note here