UK job vacancies hit record high in July amid staff shortages
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Tuesday 17 Aug 2021
(Sharecast News) - UK job vacancies hit a record high in May to July amid staff shortages in many industries, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics.
Vacancies rose by 290,000 from the previous quarter to 953,000. This was a 168,000 increase compared to pre-pandemic levels between January and March 2020.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in the three months to June ticked down 0.2 percentage points to 4.7%.
The data showed that the number of payroll employees rose 182,000 to 28.9m in July. However, it remains 201,000 below pre-Covid levels.
Average weekly pay growth rose to 8.8% in June from 7.4% in May, hitting the highest level since the series began in 2001 and coming in above the Bank of England's forecast of 8.5%.
Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician for economic statistics at the ONS, said: "The world of work continues to rebound robustly from the effects of the pandemic.
"The number of people on payroll was up again strongly and has now grown over half a million in the past three months, regaining about four-fifths of the fall seen at the start of the pandemic.
"As large parts of the economy started to reopen in recent months, the number of hours worked went past 1bn a week for the first time since the onset of the pandemic."
Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics, said the rise in average weekly pay will fuel concerns on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) that higher CPI inflation will persist in 2022.
"Overall, we still think that the Bank of England won't hike interest rates until mid-2023, rather than in mid-2022 as the markets expect. Today's figures, however, suggest that the risks are tilted towards wage growth coming in a bit higher and the MPC raising rates a bit sooner than we anticipate."
Email this article to a friend
or share it with one of these popular networks:
You are here: news
10 Lower Thames St,
London EC3R 6EN