Vacancies Fall Below 700,000 for the First Time Since the Pandemic
There were 691,000 vacancies in the three months to September, down 21,000 on the quarter and the fewest outside the pandemic since 2014. Unemployment fell 0.1 percentage points to 4.7% and employment rose to 75.3%. Regular pay grew 3.7%, or 0.6% after inflation. The statisticians attribute the vacancy fall mainly to smaller firms citing higher labour costs.
One caveat belongs at the top: the 21,000 fall sits inside the statisticians’ own confidence interval of plus or minus 32,000, so the direction is clearer than the magnitude. What is harder is the breadth. Vacancies fell in fourteen of eighteen industry sectors and in four of five size bands, with the largest single fall — 21,000 — among firms employing between one and nine people, which is precisely where the complaint about employment costs has been loudest. Construction lost 7,000. There are now 2.4 unemployed people for every vacancy, up from 2.5 a quarter ago, and payrolled employees are 111,000 lower than a year ago. Two further figures deserve attention. Total pay growth, which includes bonuses, has slipped to 3.7% from 3.9% — the statisticians note it was last lower in the autumn of 2020, when it was 2.8%. And public sector regular pay is growing at 6.3% against 3.0% in the private sector, which they attribute to the timing of pay awards rather than any underlying divergence. No Treasury or Bank of England response had been issued when this was published.