Employment suffers largest fall since pandemic

Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, payrolled employment fell by 47,000 last month — the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of vacancies in the economy fell for the 30th consecutive period, unemployment rose to 4.4 per cent and there have been 21,000 more redundancies than in the same period a year ago.

In a boost to those British workers still in jobs, pay is on the up. The ONS’s figures show that once inflation is removed the average worker experienced a 2.4 per cent pay rise in the three months to November last year. These pay increases were driven by the private sector which saw 6 per cent rises in cash terms compared with just over 4 per cent in the public sector.