Employment by industry and sex, UK, published quarterly, non-seasonally adjusted. Labour Force Survey. These are official statistics in development.

Labour market statistics summary data table, including earnings, employment, unemployment, redundancies and vacancies, Great Britain and UK, published monthly.

In May 2025, the employment rate in the United Kingdom was 75.2 percent, up from 75.1 percent in the previous month. After almost dropping below 70 percent in 2011, the employment rate in the United Kingdom started to climb at a relatively fast pace, peaking in early 2020. Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, employment declined to 74.6 percent by January 2021. Although not quite at pre-pandemic levels, the employment rate has since recovered. Labor market trouble in 2025? Although unemployment in the UK spiked at 5.3 percent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it fell throughout most of 2022, to just 3.6 percent in August 2022. Around that time, the number of job vacancies in the UK was also at quite high levels, reaching a peak of 1.3 million by May 2022. The strong labor market put employees in quite a strong position, perhaps encouraging the high number of resignations that took place around that time. Since 2023, however, the previously hot labor market has cooled, with unemployment reaching 4.6 percent in April 2025 and job vacancies falling to a four-year low of 736,000 in May 2025. Furthermore, the number of employees on UK payrolls has fallen by 227,500 in the first five months of the year, indicating that 2025 will be a tough one for the labor market. Headline economic measures revised in early 2025 Along with the unemployment rate, the UK's inflation rate is also expected to be higher than initially thought in 2025, reaching a rate of 3.2 percent for the year. The economy will also grow at a slower pace of one percent rather than the initial prediction of two percent. Though these negative trends are not expected to continue in the long term, the current government has already expended significant political capital on unpopular decisions, such as the cutting of Winter Fuel Payments to pensioners in 2024. As of June 2025, they are almost as unpopular as the previous government, with a net approval rating of -52 percent.

Main labour market statistics time series data (large dataset).

39.8% of workers from the Indian ethnic group were in 'professional' jobs in 2021 – the highest percentage out of all ethnic groups in this role.

There were over 34.1 million people employed in the United Kingdom in the three months to May 2025. In general, the number of people employed has consistently increased, with noticeable dips in employment occurring in 2008 due to the global financial crisis and in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor market hot streak in 2022 Although there was a sharp increase in the UK's unemployment rate in the aftermath of COVID-19, the UK labor market bounced back forcefully after this sudden shock. By the middle of 2022, the UK's unemployment rate had recovered to pre-pandemic levels, while the number of job vacancies in the UK reached record highs. Wage growth was, by this point, growing at a much slower rate than inflation, which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. In the two years since this peak, the UK labor market has cooled slightly, with unemployment reaching 4.4 percent by December 2024 and the number of job vacancies falling to the lowest figures since May 2021. Characteristics of UK workers As of 2024, the majority of UK workers were working in the private sector, at over 27.6 million workers. In the same year, the size of the UK's public sector workforce stood at approximately 6.1 million, with over two million of these people working for the UK's National Health Service (NHS) and a further 1.66 million in the public education sector. In the UK's private sector, the industry sector that employed the most people was wholesale and retail, which had a workforce of over 4.9 million people, followed by administrative and support service roles at around 3.1 million.

As of the first quarter of 2025, the employment rate of England stood at 75.4 percent, the highest employment rate of the four countries of the United Kingdom. By contrast, Wales had the lowest employment rate, at 71.3 percent.

As of the first quarter of 2025, the employment rate in the United Kingdom was highest among 35 to 49-year-old's, with **** percent of that age group employed. In the same quarter, approximately **** percent of over 65s were employed, a peak for this provided time period, while the employment rate for 16 to 24s was **** percent, one of the lowest rates for this age group.

In 2025, there were over **** million filled jobs in human health and social work in the United Kingdom, the most of any industry. In wholesale and retail, there were around *** million filled jobs, making it the second most common industry in terms of employment.

Labour Market Statistics for Northern Ireland (employment, unemployment).

Source agency: Enterprise, Trade and Investment (Northern Ireland)

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Labour Market Statistics Quarterly Supplement

Employment Rate in the United Kingdom increased to 75.20 percent in May from 75.10 percent in April of 2025. This dataset provides - United Kingdom Employment Rate- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

Experimental labour market estimates using administrative data to produce adjusted UK employment, unemployment and economic inactivity measures, seasonally adjusted. Includes a breakdown by countries and regions of the UK.

The UK Data Service also holds a Secure Access version of the QLFS (see below); household datasets; two-quarter and five-quarter longitudinal datasets; LFS datasets compiled for Eurostat; and some additional annual Northern Ireland datasets.

LFS Documentation
The documentation available from the Archive to accompany LFS datasets largely consists of the latest version of each user guide volume alongside the appropriate questionnaire for the year concerned (the latest questionnaire available covers July-September 2022). Volumes are updated periodically, so users are advised to check the latest documents on the ONS Labour Force Survey - User Guidance pages before commencing analysis. This is especially important for users of older QLFS studies, where information and guidance in the user guide documents may have changed over time.

LFS response to COVID-19

From April 2020 to May 2022, additional non-calendar quarter LFS microdata were made available to cover the pandemic period. The first additional microdata to be released covered February to April 2020 and the final non-calendar dataset covered March-May 2022. Publication then returned to calendar quarters only. Within the additional non-calendar COVID-19 quarters, pseudonymised variables Casenop and Hserialp may contain a significant number of missing cases (set as -9). These variables may not be available in full for the additional COVID-19 datasets until the next standard calendar quarter is produced. The income weight variable, PIWT, is not available in the non-calendar quarters, although the person weight (PWT) is included. Please consult the documentation for full details.

Occupation data for 2021 and 2022 data files

The ONS has identified an issue with the collection of some occupational data in 2021 and 2022 data files in a number of their surveys. While they estimate any impacts will be small overall, this will affect the accuracy of the breakdowns of some detailed (four-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)) occupations, and data derived from them. Further information can be found in the ONS article published on 11 July 2023: Revision of miscoded occupational data in the ONS Labour Force Survey, UK: January 2021 to September 2022.

2024 Reweighting

In February 2024, reweighted person-level data from July-September 2022 onwards were released. Up to July-September 2023, only the person weight was updated (PWT23); the income weight remains at 2022 (PIWT22). The 2023 income weight (PIWT23) was included from the October-December 2023 quarter. Users are encouraged to read the ONS methodological note of 5 February, Impact of reweighting on Labour Force Survey key indicators: 2024, which includes important information on the 2024 reweighting exercise.

End User Licence and Secure Access QLFS data

Two versions of the QLFS are available from UKDS. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement, and the other is a Secure Access version. The EUL version includes country and Government Office Region geography, 3-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) and 3-digit industry group for main, second and last job (from July-September 2015, 4-digit industry class is available for main job only).

The Secure Access version contains more detailed variables relating to:

• age: single year of age, year and month of birth, age completed full-time education and age obtained highest qualification, age of oldest dependent child and age of youngest dependent child
• family unit and household: including a number of variables concerning the number of dependent children in the family according to their ages, relationship to head of household and relationship to head of family
• nationality and country of origin
• finer detail geography: including county, unitary/local authority, place of work, Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 (NUTS2) and NUTS3 regions, and whether lives and works in same local authority district, and other categories;
• health: including main health problem, and current and past health problems
• education and apprenticeship: including numbers and subjects of various qualifications and variables concerning apprenticeships
• industry: including industry, industry class and industry group for main, second and last job, and industry made redundant from
• occupation: including 5-digit industry subclass and 4-digit SOC for main, second and last job and job made redundant from
• system variables: including week number when interview took place and number of households at address
• other additional detailed variables may also be included.

The Secure Access datasets (SNs 6727 and 7674) have more restrictive access conditions than those made available under the standard EUL. Prospective users will need to gain ONS Accredited Researcher status, complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables. Users are strongly advised to first obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements.

Latest edition information

For the seventh edition (January 2025), the 2022 person weight (PWT22) was replaced with the 2024 person weight (PWT24). Only the person weight has been replaced with a 2024 version; the 2022 income weight (PIWT22) remains.

As of the first quarter of 2025, South West England had the highest rate of employment in the United Kingdom at 79.9 percent. By contrast, North East England had the lowest employment rate at 68 percent.

As of the first quarter of 2025, there were approximately ****million people employed in the finance and insurance sector in the UK, compared with ****million in the first quarter of 2000.