Regional labour market, October 2015

14 Oct 2015 01:32 PM

Main points

• The UK employment rate, for the 3 months ending August 2015, was highest in the South West (78.4%) and lowest in Northern Ireland (67.9%). The employment rate estimates showed few large movements for the regions and countries of the UK.
• The UK unemployment rate, for the 3 months ending August 2015, was highest in the North East (8.6%) and lowest in the South West (4.0%). With the exception of the North East, the general pattern is for gently falling unemployment rates, although some of those falls appear to be levelling off.
• The UK inactivity rate, for the 3 months ending August 2015, was highest in Northern Ireland (27.6%) and lowest in the South West (18.2%). The largest change in the inactivity rate, compared to the same period last year, was in Wales, which has decreased by 2.1 percentage points.
• The UK Claimant Count rate, for September 2015, was highest in Northern Ireland (4.5%) and lowest in the South East (1.3%). Compared with August 2015, the only regions to show an increase in the Claimant Count rate were Scotland and the North West, both at 0.1 percentage point.
• The largest increase in UK workforce jobs, for June 2015, was in Yorkshire and The Humber, at 37,000. The largest decrease was in the North West, at 23,000.
• The highest proportion of workforce jobs in the service sector was in London, at 91.7%, which has remained unchanged since March 2015. The East Midlands had the highest proportion of jobs in the production sector, at 13.7%.
• The highest average actual weekly hours worked, for the 12 months ending June 2015, was in Northern Ireland, at 33.5 hours and lowest in the North East, at 31.4 hours. For both full-time and part-time workers, it was highest in Northern Ireland, at 38.1 hours and 17.3 hours, respectively.

Get all the tables for this publication in the data section of this publication.