Labour Market Trends: June 2025

Data and Methodology

All estimates presented are sourced from the Labour Force Survey, a survey of households collected and published by the Office for National Statistics with the exception of those in sections 1, 2 and 3.

ONS Labour Force Survey

Alongside the ONS labour market statistics release in May 2025, ONS published an article on LFS quality, including coherence. This quality article coincided with the first period of LFS data that incorporates the full impact of some of the larger recovery efforts ONS made from January 2024.

Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates for January to March 2025 onwards include the full impact of the recovery efforts made to the LFS data collection and sampling methods introduced by ONS from January 2024. These estimates are expected to be an improvement on how representative the data is with regards to current labour market conditions. However, an increased amount of volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 until the end of 2024. Therefore, ONS still advise caution when interpreting changes over time including these time periods and continue to recommend using the LFS estimates as part of the wider suite of labour market indicators, alongside Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information estimates.

Revisions

These are official statistics in development. In March 2025, ONS revised their Labour Force Survey seasonally adjusted data back to January to March 2019 due to a seasonal adjustment review. This followed a reweighting exercise in December 2024. On 3 December 2024, ONS published an article outlining how the estimates have been affected by reweighting. These estimates were included in the main ONS release from 17 December 2024

The reweighted LFS estimates incorporate information on the size and composition of the UK population, based on 2022 mid-year estimates. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2021-based National Population projections, published in January 2024. For Scotland, they are projected forward using scaling factors from 2020-based National Population Projections, published in January 2023.

Given time constraints, ONS were only able to reweight LFS estimates from January to March 2019 onwards. Therefore, the reweighting exercise creates a discontinuity between December 2018 to February 2019 and January to March 2019 where there will be a step change in LFS estimates. However, the seasonally adjusted UK levels of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity by sex and age-band have been modelled back to June to August 2011 to ensure that headline rates and levels by sex and age-band (datasets A02SA and A05SA) can be assessed without a discontinuity.

Reweighting takes account of more recent population estimates but does not address issues surrounding the increased volatility in the LFS data, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes. An increased amount of volatility will remain in the estimates between mid-2023 and the end of 2024.

The longer-term solution remains the replacement of the Labour Force Survey with the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS).

Labour Market Transformation

ONS are transforming the LFS. They have published a series of Labour market transformation articles providing updates on the transformation of labour market statistics.

HMRC RTI

This release covers people paid through the HMRC’s Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system where their pay is reported through the Real Time Information (RTI) system.

Information presented in this release are monthly estimates of the number of payrolled employees and their median earnings. It includes UK and geographical regions (NUTS1) early estimates of payrolled employment and median pay for the most recent month.

Statistics in this release are based on people who are employed in at least one job paid through HMRC’s PAYE system and the monthly estimates reflect the average for each day of the calendar month.

The publication and background information can be accessed on the ONS website.

Claimant Count

The Claimant Count consists of claimants of Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) and some Universal Credit (UC) Claimants. The UC claimants that are included are 1) those that were recorded as not in employment (May 2013-April 2015), and 2) those claimants of Universal Credit who are required to search for work, i.e. within the Searching for Work conditionality regime as defined by the Department for Work & Pensions (from April 2015 onwards). The denominator for the claimant count rate is the claimant count plus workforce jobs. Estimates included in this publication are seasonally adjusted.

In May 2024, the Department for Work and Pensions rolled out an increase in the administrative earnings threshold for full work search conditionality. This change affected around 180,000 claimants in the UK over the summer of 2024, increasing the Claimant Count over that time. This policy change, along with two previous increases to the administrative earnings threshold in September 2022 and January 2023, represent discontinuities in the Claimant Count series.

Where can labour market data for Scotland be accessed

Labour Force Survey estimates for Scotland are also published on Nomis

This release follows the ONS monthly release of Regional Labour Market Statistics in the UK

A range of Labour Market Statistics for Scotland are also published by the Office for National Statistics

Scottish Government Labour Market Statistics

• Scotland's Labour Market Insights (published on 30 April 2025) is a quarterly publication summarising employment, unemployment and economic inactivity estimates sourced from a range of official labour market statistics for Scotland and the UK.
• The Labour market data for 16 to 24 year olds in Scotland is sourced from the ONS Annual Population Survey, January to December 2024 (last published on 16 April 2025).

Other SG labour market publications from the ONS Annual Population Survey:

• Disabled people in the labour market in Scotland: January to December 2022
• Job-related training in Scotland: January to December 2022
• Labour Market Statistics for Scotland by Ethnicity: January to December 2021
• Scotland's Labour Market: People, Places and Regions – Protected Characteristics. Statistics from the Annual Population Survey 2021

Other SG labour market publications

• Quarterly Public Sector Employment Q1 2025
• Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2024
• Topical publications