News

The latest labour market overview from the ALP includes a number of interesting statistics, news and insights to inform your next hiring decisions.

The latest ONS Employment and Labour Market Statistics reported:

Early estimates for September 2023 indicate that payrolled employees were up by 1.2% on September 2022. This is a rise of 369,000 employees; it was up by 3.8% since February 2020, a rise of 1,102,000.

UK payrolled employees for August 2023 has been revised to show a decrease of 8,000 on July, because of the incorporation of additional real time information (RTI) submissions to HMRC.

Annual growth in regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 7.8% in June to August 2023. This is similar to recent periods and is one of the highest regular annual growth rates since comparable records began in 2001.

The number of vacancies in July to September 2023 was 988,000, down 43,000 on the previous 3 months. They were down by 256,000 from a year ago, although they remained 187,000 above their pre-Covid levels.
 
The British Chamber of Commerce has published its latest Quarterly Economic Forecast Q3 2023.

It reports that the UK labour market remains very tight, and their recent survey showed that 8 in 10 firms attempting to recruit were facing recruitment difficulties. It is expecting a modest increase in unemployment, peaking at 4.7% in 2024. Average earnings are expected to grow more strongly over the next three years, with 5.5% growth in 2023 and 3.5% in 2024, and 2.5% in 2005, this is above the forecasts for year-end CPI inflation in the next two years.

The CIPD’s latest survey report on Health and Wellbeing at work found that sickness absence levels are now the highest they have been for over a decade.

UK employees were absent for 7.8 days on average over the past year, and two days more than the pre-pandemic sickness absence rate of 5.8 days. As well as an overall increase in absence, it found stress to be a significant factor for both short- and long-term absence, with over 76% of respondents reporting stress-related absence in their organisation in the past year.

Key findings:

The top causes of short-term absence are:

• Minor illnesses (94%)
• Musculoskeletal injuries (45%)
• Mental ill health (39%)

Causes of long-term absence are similar:

• Mental ill health (63%)
• Acute medical conditions, such as stroke or cancer (51%)
• Musculoskeletal injuries (51%)

The findings also show that over a third (37%) of organisations reported COVID-19 as still being a significant cause of short-term absence.

The DWP (Department and Work and Pensions) is expanding its Youth Offer to provide tens of thousands of young people with support to find work.

This will give over 30,000 of 16-24-year-olds the option to access three types of support through the Youth Offer: additional time with a Work Coach early in their claim; access to Youth Hubs; and Youth Employability Coaches.