| The latest UK unemployment rate continues to increase, now standing at 5%, 1.789 million people unemployed. Unemployment amongst young people remains high, particularly the youngest age group (aged 16-17 = 36%/ aged 18-24 = 12.7%). Employment rate decreased slightly to 75%, 34.19 million people in employment. UK economic inactivity rate is largely unchanged at 21.0%. 9.08 million people are economically inactive, 226,000 fewer than last year but still higher than pre-pandemic levels. Vacancies are broadly unchanged with just a small increase to 723,000. This means there are 2.5 unemployed people per vacancy. The estimate of payrolled employees for October 2025 decreased by 180,000 on the year and 32,000 on the month, to 30.3 million. Annual growth in regular pay without bonus was 4.6% and with bonus was 4.8%. Adjusted for inflation, annual growth in regular pay was 0.5% and total pay was 0.7%. Claimant count increased on the month to 1.696 million but decreased on the year. This is the measure of those receiving benefit principally due to being unemployed. Redundancies were 4.5 per thousand employees, up on last quarter and higher than 12 months ago. 39,000 working days were lost because of labour disputes in September 2025. |
| Policy and Research Highlights |
