THE official measure of unemployment in Northern Ireland fell to a record low of 2.1% in the three months to September, new government figures suggest.
The latest labour market report from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra), indicates the record low unemployment rate, which relates to the July to September period, was 0.2 percentage points (pps) below the pre-pandemic rate recorded in October-December 2019.
The north’s official employment rate was measured as 72.2% for the same three months to September.
Nisra said that marked a 0.8pps increase over the quarter and 2.2pps over the year.
Meanwhile, Northern Ireland's stubbornly high level of economic inactivity also moved in the right direction.
The latest labour force survey suggests the rate fell 0.2pps over the quarter to 26.3%, which was 1.4pps below where it stood a year earlier.
By comparison the UK rate for economic inactivity stood at of 20.9% for the three months to September.
New data from HMRC published on Tuesday also showed a record number of payroll jobs in Northern Ireland.
Some 797,434 employees were receiving pay through HMRC PAYE (pay as you earn) in the north during October, a 0.3% increase over the month and a 2.0% increase over the year.
That’s almost 44,000 more than February 2020, one month before the Covid-19 lockdown was declared in March 2020.
HMRC’s data put the median monthly pay in the north at £2,100 for October, just £2 (0.1%) higher than September and £118 (6%) up on 12 months earlier.
The north’s claimant count stayed at 3.8% in October for the third month running.
Nisra said it was the 19th consecutive month that the claimant count rate has been within the 3.6% to 3.8% range.
Officially, there were 450 redundancies recorded in Northern Ireland in October, slightly up on the 420 recorded in September.
The figure measures cases where employers are legally required to notify government when laying off 20 staff or more.
Nisra measured 2,200 confirmed redundancies over the year to October 2023, more than double the previous year (940).
Almost half the jobs lost over the past year came in the three months to October.
However, the number of new (proposed) redundancies for October was too low for Nisra to publish.
In its commentary, published on Tuesday alongside the latest labour market data, Nisra described the annual movement in both the rates of employment and unemployment as “statistically significant”.
