February Labour Market Update

Our monthly labour market briefing focuses on public sector pay change, the impact of welfare reform and changes in part-time and full-time employment.

Briefing published on 15 February 2012

Part time employment up, full time employment down

The employment rate in the three months to December 2012 was up by 0.1 percentage points compared to the three months to September 2011, despite the contraction in GDP over this period.

This increase was mainly driven by an increase in part-time workers – while the number of people working part time increased by 90,000, the number of full time workers fell by 26,000.  The majority of this increase in part time working was because of people being unable to find full time employment. There was an increase of 83,000 in the number of people working shorter hours because they could not find a full time job to reach 1.35 million reflecting the continued weakness of the national economy.