15 March 2022
If you are covering the latest UK labour market statistics, please see the following comment from Paul Craig, portfolio manager at Quilter Investors:
“This morning’s ONS data shows the UK labour market has had yet another strong month. The market remained resilient post-Omicron, and is continuing well on its way to recovery.
“The unemployment rate dropped by a further 0.2 percentage points on the quarter to 3.9% and has now fallen below the pre-pandemic February 2020 level of 4%. The employment rate also improved, with an increase of 0.1 percentage points on the quarter to 75.6%. Full-time employees have driven the increase in the employment rate in the last few months, while recovering the gap in part-time jobs appears to remain somewhat problematic.
“With the impact of the Omicron variant behind us, along with the relaxing of the government’s Covid-19 restrictions, the positive recovery is continuing. Payrolled employees were up 275,000 in February, setting yet another new record high of 29.7 million.
“Job vacancies also saw a new record high of 1,318,000 between December 2021 and February 2022, up 105,000 on the last quarter. While we are still seeing vacancies rise for now, the rate of growth has continued to slow and will likely slow further over the coming months.
“The labour market has seen a strong start to 2022 and managed to avoid any major impact following the Omicron variant. This strength will ‘allow’ the Bank of England to further hike rates at this week’s MPC meeting, though it is important to remember that employment is a ‘lagging’ economic indicator and we could well see it slow over the coming months – particularly given the current circumstances. While unemployment has returned to pre-pandemic lows for now, there is some talk of potential shutdowns caused by the supply chain impact of Russia’s attack on Ukraine which may hinder this progress.”
