This article titled “UK job numbers boosted by women delaying retirement” was written by Phillip Inman Economics correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2016 12.34 UTCMeadows & Co celebrate diversity
Britain’s employment rate reached a record high and wages ticked up in March, dashing government claims that the job market was being seriously damaged by the threat of a leave vote in the EU referendum.
The number of people employed increased by 44,000 to 31.58 million, while total pay including bonuses edged up by 2%, from 1.9% in February, on the rolling quarter-on-quarter measure used by the Office for National Statistics.
The ONS said much of the rise in employment could be attributed to rules forcing women to retire later. In recent years, the government has started to push up the retirement age for women from 60, which has added thousands of people to the employment register who would have previously retired.
The employment rate for women reached 69.2% in March, the highest since comparable records began in 1971, the ONS said.
A steep rise in the number of workers from the rest of the EU also fuelled an increase in the overall employment rate to 74.2%, a record. The number of migrant workers increased by 224,000 to a record 2.15 million over the past year, compared with a 185,000 rise in the number of Britons working in the UK labour force.
Total wages, including bonuses, increased month on month from 1.2% in February following heavy revisions of the data to 2.6% in March, as bonuses paid to City traders took effect.
The rebound from a weaker picture in the first three months of the year defied the predictions of City analysts, who expected a further deterioration in total pay to 1.7%.
In more good news for the government, unemployment fell slightly to 1.69 million, a decline of 2,000 on the previous month.
Last month, the work and pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, said the rise in unemployment in February, the first for seven months, could be the result of Brexit fears. There would be companies “looking at major investments into the UK who are hanging back and considering whether that’s the right thing to do. So of course that will have an impact”, he said.
Jeremy Cook, the chief economist at currency dealer World First, agreed with Crabb’s analysis that the figures were indicative of a listless labour market weighed down by fears of a vote to leave the EU in the referendum on 23 June.
“Employment in the UK could easily be topping out as we head into the UK’s referendum on its EU membership. Naturally, as an economy gets closer to full employment, the incremental gains that can be made in the labour market weaken; record highs of employment see to that,” he said.
“While wages have grown slightly this month … these numbers are relatively meaningless in the short term.
“We can say wage pressures are building and be content that industries are not losing workers ahead of the referendum, or [experiencing] a near-term slowdown in output, but what was once the crown jewel of UK economic data has been shown to be slightly less lustrous than originally thought.”
Laura Gardiner, a senior analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said there were clear signs that the labour market recovery had been slowing in recent months.
“While uncertainty associated with the EU referendum may well have contributed a little to this cooling, the truth is that employment has been broadly flat since October last year. Given this backdrop, today’s figures instead suggest that the UK’s jobs recovery is reaching its limits,” she said.
The senior ONS statistician David Freeman said: “The employment rate has hit another record high, but this time the increase is quite modest. With unemployment very little changed, that is further evidence the jobs market could be cooling off.”
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