5 days ago
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
‘Significant' increase in weekly hours worked in Northern Ireland: government report
Data from the labour force survey said there had been 30.4 million hours worked per week between February and April – an increase of 4.3% over the year.
The Department for the Economy, which released data on the labour market on Tuesday, said the number of hours worked was 1.2% above the pre-Covid-19 position.
It described the annual increase as a 'statistically significant' change, which brought the number of hours worked to the highest level recorded in recent times.
But the labour force survey, from the NI Statistics & Research Agency (Nisra), also showed a rise in the economic inactivity rate to 26.9%, following an increase of 1.2 percentage points over the year.
The economic inactivity rate, measuring the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 not working and not seeking or available to work, had also increased by 0.3 percentage points (pps) over the quarter.
Tuesday's data also includes updates from HRMC, which said there had been 809,700 people in NI receiving pay through PAYE in May, a fall of 0.1% over the month but an increase of 0.8% over the year.
HMRC PAYE data also said employees in Northern Ireland had a median monthly pay of of £2,385 in May 2025, a decrease of £21 (0.9%) over the month and an increase of £152 (6.8%) over the year.
According to the labour force survey, the unemployment rate for February to April was 1.8%, which was up 0.2 percentage points (pps) over the quarter and down 0.3pps over the year.
And the survey said the employment rate had dropped by 0.5pps over the quarter and by 1.0pps over the year to 71.7%.
In May, the seasonally adjusted number of people on the claimant count was 38,200, or 3.9% of the workforce, a decrease of 1.5% from the previous month's revised figure. The May 2025 claimant count remains 28% higher than the pre-pandemic count in March 2020.
And Nisra said it had received confirmation that 560 redundancies occurred last month.
Over the year June 2024 to May 2025, 2,170 redundancies were confirmed, which was approximately 90% of the figure for the previous year (2,470).
News Catch Up - Tuesday 10th June
There were 780 proposed redundancies in May 2025, taking the annual total to 3,200, which was around 80% of the figure for the previous year (4,040).
And in the quarterly employment survey, businesses reported that employee jobs increased over the quarter (1.0%) and increased over the year (2.1%) to 840,750 jobs in March 2025.
There were quarterly increases in employee jobs within the manufacturing, construction and services sectors while there was a quarterly decrease in the sector of 'other industry'.
