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Key figures

  • In October to December 2024, the number of people aged 16+ in employment was 33.86 million, and the employment rate for people aged 16-64 was 74.9%. Employment levels increased by around 480,000 over the last year, and the employment rate increased slightly.

    The ONS suggest comparing Labour Force Survey to other labour market sources, such as the workforce jobs series or the estimates for payrolled employees using PAYE data.

    The increase in employment of 479,000 over the year to October to December 2024 compares to:

    • An increase of 106,000 payrolled employees in the year to October to December 2024.
    • An increase of 364,000 jobs in the year to September 2024.The workforce jobs series is published every quarter and the figures for December will be published in March.
  • The UK unemployment rate was 4.4%, and 1.56 million people aged 16+ were unemployed. Unemployment levels increased by around 210,000 over the last year, and the unemployment rate also increased.
  • 9.29 million people aged 16-64 were economically inactive, and the inactivity rate was 21.5%. Both inactivity levels and the inactivity rate fell in the last year.
  • The number of vacancies fell in the last quarter and over the year to 819,000 in October to December 2024, but remain slightly above pre-pandemic levels.
  • Average wages increased in real (inflation-adjusted) terms in the three months to December 2024, with an annual change of 3.4% including bonuses and 3.4% excluding bonuses. Nominal wages continued to rise, at a rate of 6.0% including bonuses and 5.9% excluding bonuses.

Eight time series charts showing the trends in the UK labour market since 2011. Chart 1: The employment rate has been between 70% and 80% since 2011, it fell in 2020. Chart 2: The unemployment rate fell between 2011 and 2020, then spiked during the pandemic before falling again. It has been mostly slowly rising since 2023. Chart 3: The economic inactivity rate has been between 20% and 25% since 2011. It rose during the pandemic. Chart 4: Real average weekly wages including and excluding bonuses have remained relatively stable since 2011. They have been slowly rising since 2023. Chart 5: The number of full time workers has been slowly rising since 2011. The number of part-time workers has remained mostly stable, but dipped during the pandemic. Chart 6: The number of employees has been slowly rising since 2011. The number of self employed people has remained mostly stable, but dipped during the pandemic and has not recovered. Chart 7: Redundancies mostly fell between 2011 and 2029, then spiked during the pandemic and recovered quickly. Chart 8: Vacancies rose between 2011 and 2020, fell sharply in 2020 and then recovered quickly and increased sharply until the end of 2022, and have been falling since.

Reliability of Labour Force Survey data

In February 2024, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reintroduced Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, after issues with data. This is after only limited experimental headline data was published between October 2023 and January 2024 due to falling response rates. In December 2024, the ONS reweighted some labour market data with new population estimates.

The ONS have said that the reintroduced LFS estimates should be treated with additional caution. Due to time constraints, data has only been reweighted from January to March 2019 onwards. This means there is a break in the data. The ONS has remodelled data back to June to August 2011 for the headline measures (employment, unemployment and economic inactivity).

This briefing provides the statistics that have been published by the ONS, but these statistics should be treated with more caution than usual. Section 1 provides further information.

The Library’s Economy dashboard provides more labour market data.

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