Northern Ireland workforce continues to grow, figures suggest

Northern Ireland employers continued to grow their workforces in November, official figures suggest.

The number of people on company payrolls increased by 0.7% to 771,000, the sixth consecutive month that employee numbers have been above pre-pandemic levels.

An alternative measure, the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), also showed the number of employees increasing.

Meanwhile, proposed and confirmed redundancies have remained low.

Statistics agency Nisra said the rolling 12-month total of proposed redundancies was at its lowest since 2014.

Payroll data, provided by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), is the most timely and best single overall indicator of the labour market.

It shows the number of payrolled employees was up by almost 5% compared to November last year.

The QES measurement is a survey of about 6,000 companies, covering all employers with 25 or more employees and all public sector employers.

It estimates there were 779,470 employee jobs in September, an increase of 7,520 jobs over the quarter and 8,070 jobs over the year.

Hours worked

There was growth in both the public and private sectors.

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Public sector jobs were estimated at 216,710 - up by 4,300 or 2% over the year.

Private sector jobs were estimated at 563,120 - up by 3,680 or 0.7% over the year.

All broad industry sectors apart from construction experienced an increase in employee jobs over the year to September, with the services sector reporting the biggest annual increase.

However other labour market measures suggest the damage from the coronavirus pandemic has not yet been fully reversed.

Labour Force Survey data for the period from August to October this year shows the total number of hours worked was still 3.6% below pre-pandemic levels.

Self-employment has been much slower to recover than employee jobs and the employment rate, which covers both types of work, was still 1.9 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels.