Employment and Unemployment in UK’s Labour Market2 min read

A recent statistic provided by the UK labour market shows that for the past year the number of people between 16 and 64 years, has increased with 75.4%.

The statistic, also pointed out that the employment rate is higher since 1971, with 32.26 million people having been employed.

It also appears, that the unemployment rate went down from 4.7% to 4.2%, making it the lowest since 1975.

To break it down a little bit, everybody aged 16 to 64 is either employed, unemployed or economically inactive. From those people, the employed ones are all the people, who are paid, including those who are working part-time.

All the unemployed ones, are people, looking for a job in the last four weeks before the statistic has been made, or have an interview in two-weeks period of time, after the calculation.

To be noted, people who are on benefits, do NOT count as unemployed.

The employment rate, however, measures the number of people in paid work and differs from the number of jobs, due to some people having more than one job.

UK labour market statistics also shows, that during the economic downturn in the early 80s, UK’s labour scored its highest unemployment rate with 65.6% in 1983.

It is also seen, that while women’s employability rose during the years, that for the men it drastically went down, marking its lowest point in 2009.

The statistic continues by showing that the total hours worked per week increased by 4.2 million to 1.03 billion. This measurement takes the number of hours worked in the economy.

Changes in it, reflect changes in the number of people in employment and the average hours worked by them.

The document shows that on average, full-time workers made 37.2 hours per week and the part-timers – 16.2, for the last working year.

The full information about the statistics is available on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) site, under the Employment and labour market.

The statistics are updated every month and are open for the public to view.