Unemployment and jobs: what’s changed under Labour?

In recent weeks we’ve seen contrasting claims being made about the labour market—in particular, on how unemployment has changed since Labour came into government in July 2024.

There are a number of different sources of statistics on the labour market. These datasets all measure slightly different things, and as a result debate on employment, unemployment and jobs can often be confusing—for example, we regularly see seemingly contradictory claims on these topics made during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), when in fact each side is referring to completely different data.

This explainer rounds up the key sources of data commonly used in discussions about employment, unemployment and jobs, and looks at what each says about the UK’s labour market since Labour took office.

How do we measure employment and unemployment?

Perhaps the most commonly used figures when talking about how many people are working are those showing employment and unemployment.

Figures on employment and unemployment have typically been based on data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which has been published monthly for several decades by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

More recently, however, the ONS has said the LFS has experienced higher than usual non-response rates since the Covid-19 pandemic, so data gathered since then should be treated with caution.

The ONS publishes figures showing the number of people who are employed (aged 16 or over and doing at least one hour of paid work per week, or having a job they’re temporarily away from) and unemployed (without a job, but available to work and actively seeking work, or being out of work but expecting to start work in the next two weeks).

These figures are used to calculate both the rate of employment—the total number of people in employment as a percentage of economically active people—and the rate of unemployment—the total number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of economically active people.

Unlike figures for the number of people in employment and unemployment, employment and unemployment rates account for changes in population and the number of people who are economically active. So, the ONS uses these statistics as the headline measure of employment and unemployment in the UK.

It’s worth noting too that unemployment figures don’t capture everyone who is not working—that’s because many people not in work are instead defined as economically inactive (people aged 16 and over without a job who have not sought work in the last four weeks and/or are not available to start work in the next two weeks).

This group includes students, stay-at-home parents, and retired people below the age of 64.

Both the number and rate of people who are economically inactive increased during the Covid-19 pandemic.

What do the figures show?

In April 2025 (the latest period for which data is available), the UK’s employment rate was 75.2%, and the number of employed people stood at 34.13 million.

Following a decrease between mid-2023 and early 2024, the rate of employment increased until mid-2024 and has remained at broadly the same level since.

Meanwhile, after reaching near-record low levels in 2022, the ONS says the unemployment rate has been “largely increasing” in the years since.

Between June 2024 (the Conservatives’ last full month in government) and April 2025, the number of unemployed people has increased by 193,000 to just over 1.67 million, while the rate of unemployment has increased by 0.5 percentage points to 4.7%—this is the highest unemployment rate outside of the pandemic since 2016.

However, the number of employed people has increased by more than half a million (541,000) between June 2024 and April 2025, while the rate of employment has seen a similar 0.5 percentage point increase.

So, this data suggests that the number of both employed and unemployed people has increased under Labour, and that the rate of both employment and unemployment has increased too.

While this may appear contradictory, this is because more people are moving into the economically active population, and so are now working or available to work. The number of economically inactive people has decreased by 326,000 since June 2024.

As of April 2025, there were 9.09 million economically inactive people in the UK—a rate of 21% (calculated as the percentage of adults aged 16-64 who are economically inactive).

Other ways to look at employment and unemployment

As previously mentioned, ongoing challenges with the LFS mean it’s important to consider other measures when looking at the state of the labour market.

The ONS also publishes pay-as-you-earn real-time information (PAYE RTI) data, which looks specifically at the number of payrolled employees in the UK.

Over the years we’ve sometimes seen this data conflated with the overall number of people who are employed or the number of jobs—but this isn’t accurate, as PAYE RTI data does not include information on the number of self-employed workers, so can’t be used to reflect overall levels of employment or jobs.

An alternative measure of unemployment, meanwhile, is the claimant count, which measures the number of people receiving benefits for the principal reason of being unemployed.

Like the LFS data, claimant count figures are designated by the ONS as “official statistics in development”.

The number of people in payrolled employment has fallen by approximately 178,000 in the year between June 2024 and June 2025, while the claimant count has increased by approximately 98,000 over the same period.

What about jobs?

During some recent sessions of PMQs, both the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner have claimed that 384,000 jobs have been created under Labour.

These claims have been challenged by the Conservative party and others on social media, who have pointed out that under Labour unemployment has risen.

This confusion is likely because Mr Starmer and Ms Rayner are referring to workforce jobs data, which includes both employed and self-employed jobs and does indeed show a 384,000 increase in the number of jobs between June 2024 and March 2025 (the latest month for which figures are available).

But, to be clear, these figures look at the number of jobs and are not comparable with data on actual employment, which looks at the number of people who are working, as some people have more than one job.