What was claimed
We now have 420,000 more people in employment than there were before the pandemic began.
Our verdict
False. The total number of people in employment, including the self-employed, is 600,000 lower than before the pandemic began.
PM misleads on employment figures, again
"We now have 420,000 more people in employment than there were before the pandemic began."
Boris Johnson, 18 January 2022.
In an interview with Sky News, Boris Johnson claimed, again, that there are more people in employment now than there were before the Covid-19 pandemic began. This is incorrect as the cited figures don’t include people who are self-employed.
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A commonly repeated claim
This is far from the first time the Prime Minister has made this error. Mr Johnson made similar claims at Prime Minister’s Questions on 24 November, 5 January and 12 January.
Also, several Cabinet Ministers and MPs have repeated the claim, including Nadine Dorries on 13 January and Mark Spencer and Suella Braverman on 12 January. It was repeated by ITV News on 18 January.
Including self-employed people, employment has fallen
When Full Fact first fact checked this claim back in November, we were told that the figure Mr Johnson used referred to the number of workers on employer payrolls. Estimates for December 2021 show there were around 29.5 million payrolled employees in the UK, around 409,000 more than in February 2020 before the start of the pandemic.
But this figure doesn’t include everyone in employment as the Prime Minister claimed. Notably it excludes the self-employed.
Data from the Office for National Statistics, which includes all people in paid work in the UK, shows the total number of people in employment, including the self-employed, is actually about 600,000 below the level just prior to the pandemic.
It has gone from about 33.1 million between December 2019 and February 2020 to 32.5 million in the latest figures from September to November 2021.
The proportion of working-age people in employment is also lower than it was in early 2020, falling from 76.6% to 75.5% in this period.
The Prime Minister did use the statistics correctly during Prime Minister’s Questions on 19 January, saying “we have more people, more employees on the payroll now, than there were before the pandemic began,” in contrast to his previous appearances at the despatch box.
The record still needs to be corrected
We have contacted the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and Downing Street no fewer than six times asking the Prime Minister to correct the official record with regards to his previous statements.
They have not taken the opportunity to do so.
The Ministerial Code states: “It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.
“Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister.”
Correction 31 January 2022
This article originally said the Daily Express had also made the claim being discussed, when it said “400,000 jobs have been added since the start of the pandemic”. The Express told Full Fact it was not referring to the number of people in employment, but to the increase in the number of job vacancies compared to the pre-pandemic level, which the ONS puts at 462,000.
We deserve better than bad information.
After we published this fact check, we contacted Boris Johnson to request a correction regarding this claim. We did not receive a substantive response.
He has also been told this claim is incorrect by the UKSA and OSR.
Boris Johnson stated a commitment to correcting the record on this when giving evidence to the Liaison Committee, but this has not happened. When the Chair of the Liaison Committee wrote to Mr Johnson asking him to provide corrections to the record, he did not do this and instead referenced a written answer to a parliamentary question on employment, which he claimed clarified his previous answers about employment levels in the UK.
He has still not corrected the official record.
We also contacted Nadine Dorries, Suella Braverman, Mark Spencer and ITV News to request corrections, they did not respond.