Unemployment rate
Actual: 4.9% (May-July 2026)
Year-on-year: +0.2pt
Quarter-on-quarter: broadly unchanged
Employment rate
Actual: 75.1%
Year-on-year: -0.1pt
Quarter-on-quarter: broadly unchanged
Economic inactivity rate
Actual: 20.9%
Year-on-year: -0.1pt
Quarter-on-quarter: -0.1pt
Payrolled employment RTI (HMRC administrative data)
July 2026 vs July 2025: -101,000 (-0.3%)
June to July 2026: -19,000 (-0.1%)
August 2026 flash estimate: -145,000 year-on-year (-0.5%), -26,000 on the month, to 30.2 million
Wage growth
Regular pay (ex bonuses): +3.5% year-on-year, stable over five rolling quarters
Total pay (incl. bonuses): +3.9% year-on-year, down from +4.2% the prior quarter, lowest since late 2020
Public sector: +6.3%, private sector: +2.9%, marked gap
Real wages, inflation-adjusted
Real regular pay (CPIH): +0.6% year-on-year
Real total pay (CPIH): +0.9% year-on-year
Limited real progress despite decent nominal growth
The real signal, continued deterioration consistent across sources
Two key indicators (RTI and unemployment rate) confirm the same slowdown trend, unlike past releases where sources sometimes diverged
Payrolled employment declining continuously for two years per RTI data, considered by the ONS the most reliable measure
Unemployment rising steadily year-on-year, consistent with the production/construction slowdown already flagged in the July GDP analyzed earlier in this series
Claimant Count and vacancies
August 2026 Claimant Count: 1.692 million, up on the month and the year
Vacancies (June-August): 702,000, down 8,000 (-1.1%) on the quarter
Vacancy level at its lowest since 2014 (excluding COVID period)
Small firms reportedly citing rising labor costs as a hiring constraint
Context, BoE pre-release access
The Bank of England had pre-release access to this data the same day as its Monetary Policy Committee meeting (September 14)
This informational advantage means the BoE had already factored this softening signal into its rate decision, unlike the market which is only now discovering it
Implications
GBP: bearish bias reinforced, consistent with the previously analyzed UK GDP showing a widening divergence between resilient services and declining production/construction
A gradually softening labor market (rising unemployment, continuously declining payrolled employment) argues for a BoE more inclined to ease, in tension with inflationary pressure from eurozone CPI and the broader oil backdrop
GBP/USD: further downward pressure likely, in tension with the US CPI that just surprised to the upside (reinforcing the dollar narrative), a double headwind for the pair
GBP/EUR: with the ECB having recently hiked while the UK labor market softens, this would create a policy divergence unfavorable to the pound
Point of caution
August RTI data remains provisional and subject to revision, the ONS explicitly flags this
The real structural signal is the now-restored consistency across different data sources (RTI, LFS, Claimant Count, vacancies), all pointing the same bearish direction, unlike prior periods where these series diverged. This convergence makes the slowdown signal more reliable than before.