NI Economy: NI's job market recovery slows, figures suggest

The recovery in the Northern Ireland jobs market may be slowing, the latest official figures suggest.

Company payrolls continued to grow in June but by less than 0.1% compared to May.

One measure of unemployment, the claimant count, showed a marginal increase.

That is the first time the claimant count has increased since February 2021.

The number of people on company payrolls reached a pre-pandemic peak of around 753,000 in March 2020.

This was followed by a sharp decrease of around 10,000 employees in April 2020.

Employee numbers remained around that level until April 2021 when a period of sustained growth began.

Payrolls have expanded for 10 consecutive months and in June hit a record of 775,400.

However, the growth in June was only around 200 jobs.

Pre-pandemic levels

On some measures the jobs market has still not recovered to its pre-pandemic levels.

The employment rate, which is the percentage of working age adults in employment, was 70.1% in the quarter March to May 2022.

That compares to 72.5% in December 2019 - February 2020, the quarter immediately before the pandemic.

The latest data also suggests that pay rises in Northern Ireland are not keeping up with the rate of inflation which stands at 9.1%.

HMRC earnings data suggests the typical employee has seen their pay increase by 6.7% over the last year compared.

The earnings data needs to be treated with caution as it could be distorted by the impacts of the furlough scheme which saw many workers on temporarily reduced wages during the pandemic.