PAYstats Pay and Labour Market Statistics, June 2021

Latest pay and labour market statistics June 2021:

• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 2.1% in the 12 months to May 2021, up from 1.5% to April.
• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) rose by 2.1% in the 12 months to May 2021, up from 1.6% to April.
• The latest figures suggest that the jobs market is showing signs of recovery.
• Following a period of employment growth and low unemployment, employment had generally been decreasing and unemployment increasing. However, the latest estimates (February to April 2021) continue to show signs of recovery. There was a quarterly increase in the employment rate of 0.2 percentage points to 75.2% and a quarterly decrease in the unemployment rate of 0.3 percentage points to 4.7%.
• The redundancy rate decreased on the quarter and is now similar to pre-pandemic levels.
• The number of job vacancies in March to May 2021 was 758,000, only 27,000 below the level before the pandemic.
• Annual growth in average employee pay has continued to increase, however this is driven by compositional effects of a fall in the number and proportion of lower-paid employee jobs and because the latest month is now compared with April 2020 when earnings were first affected by the pandemic.
• Growth in average total pay (including bonuses) and regular pay (excluding bonuses) among employees was 5.6% for the three months February to April 2021.