Unemployment rate in Northern Ireland below pre-pandemic level

The Northern Ireland unemployment rate has fallen below its immediate pre-pandemic level, the latest official data suggests.

The rate was 2.4% in the December to February quarter, just a fraction above the record low of 2.3%.

Other new data suggests the jobs market remains robust.

There was a statistically significant increase in the employment rate, up by 2.6 percentage points over the year to 71.9%.

The employment rate measures the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in work.

Fall in economic inactivity

Despite the improvement the employment rate is still below its pre-pandemic level of 72.5% and Northern Ireland continues to have the worst employment rate of any UK region.

There was also a statistically significant fall in economic inactivity over the year.

Someone is classified as economically inactive if they are not in work and looking for work.

That includes students, retired people, full-time carers and people who are sick or disabled.

The rate fell by 2.2 percentage points to 26.2%, equivalent to 25,000 people.

However Northern Ireland continues to have the highest inactivity rate of any UK region.

Almost all the reduction in inactivity over the year was due to a reduction in the number of students.

During the pandemic more young people may have stayed in education due to the uncertain job market but that effect is unwinding.

The number of people who were inactive due to long-term sickness actually increased over the year.

Although the overall jobs market continues to look strong one measure of unemployment, the claimant count, showed a slight increase in March.

It suggest an additional 800 people were claiming unemployment benefits in March compared to February.

Meanwhile experimental data from HMRC suggests that Northern Ireland has experienced relatively strong pay growth.

Using payroll data they estimate that typical monthly pay in March was £2,110, an increase of 9.2% compared to March 2022.

However that is still below the rate of inflation and public sector workers will not have experienced pay growth close to that number.

The HMRC data suggests Northern Ireland had the largest annual increase of the 12 UK regions, and now has the sixth highest median monthly pay among the UK regions.

Since March 2020, earnings in Northern Ireland have increased by 21%, 1.4 percentage points higher than the increase in the UK (19.6%) and highest of all the UK regions.