Our President responds to latest ONS employment figures

Job data: “Mission to Get Britain Working way off track”

· jamiethejobsfoundation-com

Job data: “Mission to Get Britain Working way off track” 

In response to the new data published this morning by the Office for National Statistics on April’s employment levels, Matthew Elliott, President of the Jobs Foundation, has highlighted that progress is stalling on the Government’s ambition to ‘Get Britain Working’ again.

“The Government’s ‘Get Britain Working’ ambition to boost the employment rate to 80 per cent is a vital national mission. But today’s employment figures suggest that this mission is way off track, with the employment rate flatlining at 75 per cent and 106,000 less people in payrolled employment than in the previous year.

“‘Getting Britian Working’ again will require businesses to create over a million new jobs. But these figures demonstrate that the recent rise to Employer NICs is already hampering the ability of businesses to create jobs and get people into work.

“To enable businesses to help people from welfare into work, the Government should give an Employer National Insurance tax break for employees hired from long-term unemployment or economic inactivity. This proposal would certainly be cost neutral, and might even generate additional funds for the Exchequer. We hope the Treasury will consider this for the Budget.”


NOTES

  1. All data is taken from the ONS Labour market overview, UK: May 2025, which can be found here. It highlights that ‘the early estimate of payrolled employees for April 2025 decreased by 33,000 (0.1%) on the month and decreased by 106,000 (0.3%) on the year to 30.3 million.’ It also states ‘The UK employment rate for people aged 16 to 64 years was estimated at 75.0% in January to March 2025. This is above estimates of a year ago, but largely unchanged in the latest quarter.
  2. As part of the Government’s ‘Get Britian Working’ plans, there is an ambition of getting two million more people into work. There are currently around 761,000 job vacancies in the UK, meaning that around 1.2m more jobs must be created.