Northern Ireland job market show signs of weakening

The unemployment rate - the proportion of economically active adults who are unemployed - also increased to 3%

Northern Ireland's job market has shown some signs of weakening as economic worries increase.

Official data suggests the number of people claiming unemployment benefits increased for the second month in a row in October.

The unemployment rate - the proportion of economically active adults who are unemployed - also increased to 3%.

However, unemployment remains very low by historic standards and only 60 redundancies were confirmed in October.

Companies must inform the Department for the Economy of impending redundancies of 20 or more employees and subsequent confirmed redundancies.

So few companies proposed redundancies in October that the numbers could not be disclosed to prevent identification of individual businesses.

An alternative measure suggests employers were continuing to recruit in October.

HMRC figures suggests just over 781,000 people were on company payrolls in October - an increase of 0.2% compared to September.

Earnings data from HMRC also suggests pay rises are running well below the rate of inflation.

The data suggests a typical employee in Northern Ireland had monthly pay of £1,967 in October, which is up by £117 or 6.3% over the year.

However, with the main UK rate of inflation currently above 10%, that will mean people are experiencing a decline in their real standard of living.