7/ But jobs are disappearing.
Vacancies (Oct 2025) fell 100 k (-12%) on the year and remain 90 k (-11%) below pre-pandemic.
and..
📉 Payroll employment also falling.
-0.1% (-32 k) quarterly, -0.6% (-180 k) year-on-year.

4/ And the labour market remains weak
Employment (16–64) fell 0.2 pp in Jul–Sept 2025.
Year-on-year it’s up slightly (+0.1 pp) but still 1 pp below pre-pandemic.

📈 Unemployment is rising.
Up 0.3 pp on the quarter and 0.7 pp on the year, now 1.1 pp above pre-pandemic.

2/ 📉 Real earnings have grown slower since Sept 2024.

From Sept 2023–24, real earnings grew 2.4% (£11.70).
A year later: just 0.4% (£2.10).
That’s a big year-on-year deceleration- a trend we’ve been warning about for months, now reflected in the published data.

A useful lens is the Disability Confident Employer Scheme. There’s a stark mismatch between disabled jobseekers and available roles. In 2024/25, for every “Disability Confident” role advertised, 100 people received health-related Universal Credit (UC-H).

www.jrf.org.uk/social-secur...

Behind these numbers lies a deeper story about opportunity.
The share of economically inactive disabled people who want a job has risen from 20.6% in 2023/24 to 21.7% in 2024/25, and remains above non-disabled levels, showing that many disabled people want to work, but the jobs aren’t there.

Meanwhile, the employment gap between disabled and non-disabled people has widened, up 1.1 percentage points in the past year.
That’s the largest increase since COVID hit, driven mainly by a stronger rise in employment for non-disabled people (+0.9pp).

After steady gains post-pandemic, the disability employment rate has slipped slightly, from 53.1% in 2024 to 52.8% in 2025 (-0.2pp). This reverses years of slow growth from a drop in the disabled employment rate after the pandemic.

The latest DWP data (Apr–Jun 2025) reveals an early warning sign: the number of disabled people in work may be starting to fall, the first year-on-year drop in over a decade (though not yet statistically significant).
.
Here’s what the data tells us and why it matters 👇

5/ There is one bright spot.

Between 2019–2025, the gender pay gap for full-time employees narrowed from 17.4% to 12.8% and at the lower end, it’s nearly closed to 1.6% at the 10th percentile.

Still, progress is uneven: at the top, the gap remains stubborn at around 19% for high earners.

3/ The hit was worst at the bottom of income distribution.

At the 10th percentile, hourly earnings growth fell from 5.1% in 2023/24 to 1.8% in 2024/25.

Higher earners fared slightly better, with the 90th percentile down from 3.5% to 2.6%.

2/ As @statspeter.bsky.social has shown, AWE data indicate that real earnings have stagnated since Sept 2024, growth has been near zero for 11 straight months.

The latest ASHE figures confirm the trend: real pay growth slowed sharply, from 2.9% in 2023/24 to 1.1% in 2024/25.

There is one bright spot.
Between 2019-2025, the gender pay gap for full-time employees narrowed from 17.4% to 12.8% and at the lower end, it’s nearly closed to 1.6%.

Still, progress is uneven: at the top, the gap remains stubborn at around 19% for high earners.

The slowdown hit the bottom of the income distribution hardest.

At the 10th percentile, hourly earnings growth fell from 5.1% in 2023/24 to 1.8% in 2024/25. Higher earners fared slightly better, with the 90th percentile down from 3.5% to 2.6%.

As @statspeter.bsky.social has shown, AWE data indicate that real earnings have stagnated since Sept 2024, growth has been near zero for 11 straight months.

The latest ASHE figures confirm the trend: between April 2024–2025, real pay growth slowed sharply, from 2.9% in 2023/24 to 1.1% in 2024/25.