PAYstats Pay and Labour Market Statistics, May 2020

Latest pay and labour market statistics May 2020:

• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) 12-month inflation rate was 0.9% in April 2020, down from 1.5% in March 2020.
• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) 12-month rate was 0.8% in April 2020, down from 1.5% in March.
• The UK employment rate in the three months to March 2020 was estimated at a joint-record high of 76.6%, 0.6 percentage points higher than a year earlier and 0.2 percentage points up on the previous quarter.
• The UK unemployment rate for the three months to March 2020 was estimated at 3.9%, 0.1 percentage points higher than a year earlier and 0.1 percentage points higher than the previous quarter.
• Estimated annual growth in average weekly earnings for employees in Great Britain in the 12 months to March 2020 was 1.5% for total pay (including bonuses) and 2.4% regular pay (excluding bonuses).
• In real terms (after adjusting for inflation), annual earnings growth was estimated to be 0.7% in total pay and 1.0% in regular pay, in the three months to March 2020, both down from a recent peak of 2.0% in the three months to June 2019.
• There were an estimated 637,000 vacancies in the UK in February to April 2020; this is 170,000 fewer than the previous quarter and 210,000 fewer than a year earlier.