The latest Labour Market results highlight a slowing down of the labour market within Northern Ireland. Across all sources changes in the employment levels over the year have been relatively small, with an increase in payrolled employee numbers from the HMRC payroll data and a decrease in the employment rate from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). Both the unemployment rate and the economic inactivity rate from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) have increased.
The latest HMRC payroll data shows that payrolled employees decreased by 0.1% over the month and increased by 0.4% over the year. Payrolled earnings were unchanged over the month and were 2.9% higher than August 2024.
Households reported, via the Labour Force Survey (LFS), over the year to May-July 2025, increases in both the unemployment rate (by 0.4pps to 2.2%) and the economic inactivity rate (by 0.6pps to 26.5%), while the employment rate decreased by 0.9pps to 71.8%. None of these annual changes were statistically significant.
The total number of hours worked in May-July 2025 was unchanged over the year, at 29.3million hours per week. This figure is 0.7% above the pre-pandemic position recorded in November-January 2020 and is 3.4% below the highest level recorded in this time series (30.4 million hours per week, in February-April 2025).
Businesses reported, via the Quarterly Employment Survey, that employee jobs in NI increased over the quarter and the year to reach a new series high, 842,740 jobs, in June 2025. Quarterly increases in employee jobs were seen within the manufacturing, other industry and services sectors while there was a quarterly decrease in the construction sector. The manufacturing and services sectors reached a new series high in June 2025. There were increases in employee jobs over the year within the manufacturing, construction and services sectors with an annual decrease in the other industries sector.
In August 2025, the Department was notified of 170 confirmed redundancies, bringing the rolling twelve-month total of confirmed redundancies to 2,430, approximately ninety-five percent of the figure for the previous year (2,550). In addition, 130 proposed redundancies were notified to the Department in August 2025. The annual total of proposed redundancies was 3,080, over ten percent higher than the figure for the previous year (2,760). Both the twelve-month totals of proposed and confirmed redundancies are similar to the levels seen in the decade preceding the pandemic.
Finally, the claimant count estimate over the month to August 2025 was unchanged from the revised figure for July 2025. The claimant count rate for August 2025 was also unchanged from the revised rate for July 2025 of 3.7%.
