CIPD Labour Market Outlook overview

Labour Market Outlook – Key Findings

The CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook provides a forward-looking indicator of the UK labour market, offering unique insights on labour market topics. Here are the key findings from the latest report:

Pay Awards: Expected pay awards for the next 12 months have fallen to 3%, down from 4% last quarter. This decline is observed across all sectors, with the gap in future pay awards between public and private sectors persisting.
Public Sector Pay: The average private sector pay award is expected to be 3%, compared with 2.5% in the public sector. However, the new UK Government has confirmed above-inflation pay rises of 4.75%–6% for a large proportion of the public sector workforce.
Net Employment Balance: The net employment balance, which measures the difference between employers expecting to increase staff levels and those expecting to decrease, has fallen into negative territory (−1) in the public sector for the first time since winter 2017/18.
Recruitment Challenges: Among employers surveyed, 37% have hard-to-fill vacancies, with these vacancies significantly higher in the public sector (48%) than in the private sector (34%).
Employment Intentions: The net employment balance edged down slightly to +18 this quarter, indicating a slight decrease in the difference between employers expecting to increase staff levels and those expecting to decrease

These insights are based on a quarterly survey of over 2,000 employers and are published every February, May, August, and November.

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