The rate of UK unemployment rose to 3.6% in the three months to September, up from 3.5% in the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said. Darren Morgan, director of labour and economic statistics at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said: “The proportion of people neither working nor looking for work has risen again.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, this shift has largely been caused by older workers leaving the labour market altogether, but in the most recent quarter the main contribution has actually come from younger groups.
“August and September saw well over half a million working days lost to strikes, the highest two-month total in more than a decade, with the vast majority coming from the transport and communications sectors.
“With real earnings continuing to fall, it’s not surprising that employers we survey are telling us most disputes are about pay.”
He added: “Job vacancies continue to fall back from their recent peak, with increasing numbers of employers now telling us that economic pressures are a factor in their decision to hold back on recruitment.
“The biggest driver behind the fall came from hospitality, followed by retailing and wholesaling.”
Lauren Thomas, Glassdoor’s UK Economist said: “As news of tech layoffs spreads, Glassdoor’s data shows that employees are increasingly anxious with discussion of layoffs doubling and mentions of recession up tenfold from last October. Hiring has also taken a hit, with mentions of hiring freezes up more than 450 percent.
“However, this isn’t 2008. Unlike the Great Recession, the current shortage of workers is much more acute and even a potential recession would be unlikely to result in the same peak of unemployment as we saw then. There are reasons to be hopeful – vacancies are likely to remain higher and both redundancies and unemployment are lower than before the pandemic.”
Ben Harrison, Director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, a leading think tank for improving working lives in the UK, said: “Despite unemployment being at a near all-time low at 3.6%, today’s figures show that economic inactivity is still higher now than pre-pandemic, with concerning numbers having to stop work through ill health.
"While vacancies are high at the moment, the Bank of England is forecasting unemployment will rise to 4.9% by end of 2024 and it is likely jobs will soon become harder to find. This could lead to a downward pressure on wages and conditions as the recession bites, and result in an increase in insecure work.
“At the autumn budget, the Chancellor should uprate social security in line with inflation to support job seekers and those on low incomes through the recession.
“The Government needs to support a wider group of people to access and stay in work by creating a cross-agency Participation Taskforce to address the complex underlying health and social issues need to help support more people back into work. This could include widening eligibility for Department for Work and Pensions employment support to those who are not on Universal Credit.”
