Chancellor response to July labour market statistics

Thursday, 15 July 2021 07:42

The Chancellor's response to the ONS labour market stats for July is below. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak said: “As we approach the final stages of reopening the economy, I look forward to seeing more people back at work and the economy continuing to rebound. “We are bouncing back – the number of employees on payrolls is at its highest level since last April and the number of people on furlough halved in the three months to...Request free trial

The Chancellor's response to the ONS labour market stats for July is below.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak said:

“As we approach the final stages of reopening the economy, I look forward to seeing more people back at work and the economy continuing to rebound.

“We are bouncing back – the number of employees on payrolls is at its highest level since last April and the number of people on furlough halved in the three months to May.

“Our Plan for Jobs will continue to create jobs and help people back in to work, through schemes like Kickstart, traineeships and apprenticeships.”

Notes to editors

The ONS Labour Market Statistics for July are available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/july2021
Statistics for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme showed more than one million workers came off furlough in May alone, and 2.4 million left the scheme between the end of February and the end of May. The stats are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-1-july-2021
The ONS have revised their Labour Force Survey – the survey used to generate the headline employment and unemployment figures – to account for population and migration changes as a result of the pandemic. This has resulted in the 16+ unemployment rate being revised up slightly by an estimated 0.1 percentage point and the 16+ employment rate being revised down by an estimated 0.3 percentage points.
This is a technical change which the ONS had flagged would happen previously, for example in this article from earlier in July: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/impactofreweightingonlabourforcesurveykeyindicatorsuk/2020
The unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage points in March-May compared to the previous quarter.
Data from the Insolvency Service shows that employers were planning the lowest number of redundancies since February 2015 in June.