NI economy: Jobs market may have weakened

Employment rate fell back from 72% to 71.4% between April and June this year

The Northern Ireland jobs market may have weakened slightly between April and June, new official data suggests.

The unemployment rate increased from 2.5% to 2.7% while the employment rate fell back from 72% to 71.4%.

It last reached 72.4% in the autumn of 2019 and fell back to 67.9% during the pandemic.

The statistics agency Nisra says the figures should be interpreted carefully as the changes are not statistically significant.

Another measure, the number of people on company payrolls, showed an improvement.

HMRC data suggested there were 793,000 pay rolled employees in July, a monthly increase of 0.4%.

The HMRC data also suggested typical pay rises in NI might now be matching the rate of inflation.

In July, Northern Ireland had typical monthly pay of £2,103, unchanged from the previous month but up by 7.5% compared to July 2022.

The UK's annual rate of inflation in June was 7.9% with the July data due to be published on Wednesday.

The new data is highly likely to show the rate of inflation fell to around 7% in July.

Typical monthly earnings in NI are now 20.7% higher than the pre-pandemic level recorded in March 2020 (£1,743).

However that increase is 2.5 percentage points below the UK average and the lowest increase of all the UK regions.