UK restores pre-pandemic headcount and records record of job vacancies

Londres, 14 September. (European Press) –

The United Kingdom registered 29.06 million workers in August, which means that the level of employment observed in February 2020, before the Covid-19 epidemic began to affect the country’s economy, according to this first published estimate. Tuesday by the British Office for National Statistics (ONS, for its English acronym).

Compared to August 2020, the number of workers grew by 3%, equivalent to 836,000 additional workers, while 240,833 additional people were registered in the payroll compared to the previous month, an increase of 0.8%. If the data estimate is compared to February 2020, the number of employees has increased by about 1,000 workers.

On the other hand, the Office for National Statistics estimated that the average salary in the eighth month of the year was 1,980 pounds, an increase of 5.3% over the same month in 2020. In February last year, before the outbreak of the epidemic, the average salary was 1,859 pounds . Pound, up 6.5%.

In the May-July quarter, the UK unemployment rate fell by a tenth to 4.6%. The unemployment figure is still six-tenths higher than the figure recorded in the quarter from December 2019 to February 2020, the last three-month period before the pandemic hit the economy.

The number of unemployed reached 1.55 million, which is a decrease of 86 thousand compared to the previous three months. However, registered unemployment in the UK still represented an additional 186,000 unemployed in the last quarter before the crisis.

Despite falling unemployment and reviving headcount, the UK is facing a labor shortage. Between June and August, the number of vacancies reached 1.034 million. As reported by the Office for National Statistics, this is the first time the country has recorded a number of job vacancies greater than one million.

Compared to the past three months, the number of vacancies increased by 269,300. Although all sectors recorded increases in the number of vacancies, the largest increase occurred among catering companies, whose vacancies rose by 75.4% (another 57,600).