UK unemployment rises to 4.2%, according to official data

hl.co.uk:

We don’t support this browser anymore.
This means our website may not look and work as you would expect. Read more about browsers and how to update them here.

Newsroom

Newsroom articles are published by leading news agencies. Hargreaves Lansdown is not responsible for an article's content and its accuracy. We may not share the views of the author.

HL Podcast

HL Insight

Unemployment is up in the UK, according to new experimental official data, rising 0.2% in the three months to the end of August to 4.2% when compared with the previous quarter.

Article originally published by The Guardian. Hargreaves Lansdown is not responsible for its content or accuracy and may not share the author's views. News and research are not personal recommendations to deal. All investments can fall in value so you could get back less than you invest.

Published by

24 Oct 2023

Over the same period, the number of people in work fell by 0.3 percentage points to 75.7%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, suggesting that Britain’s jobs market is cooling. Vacancies fell below 1m to 988,000, a drop of 43,000 and the 15th consecutive quarterly fall, the ONS said.

In an unusual move, the ONS had delayed its publication based on the labour force survey (LFS) it conducts each month after a poor response rate.

Instead, it released an “alternative” set of estimates of UK employment and unemployment, published as “experimental statistics” based on growth rates from pay as you earn real-time information provided by HMRC and the claimant count for the periods from May to July 2023 onwards.

“This is to provide a more holistic view of the state of the labour market while the LFS estimates are uncertain. Unadjusted June to August LFS data are not