Employment in the UK: Economic indicators

Economic indicators are quick-read summaries of the latest data focusing on different aspects of the UK economy. The full suite of indicators can be found on the main Economic Indicators page.

This page provides statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Labour Force Survey (LFS) unless marked otherwise. Due to reliability issues, the ONS have said that the employment estimates from the LFS should be considered alongside other labour market sources, such as the workforce jobs series or the estimates for payrolled employees using PAYE data.

34.39 million people were in employment in January to March 2026.

The employment rate (the proportion of the population aged 16 to 64 in work) was 75.0%. It was 72.2% for women and 77.9% for men.

Although LFS data suggests that there has been an increase in employment of 416,000 over the year to January to March 2026, this is in contrast to PAYE data which shows a fall of 94,000 payrolled employees over the same period.

LFS data suggests there has been an increase in employment over the quarter to January to March 2026 of 148,000 people. PAYE data shows employees fell by 20,000 in this period.

In January to March 2026, 25.64 million people were working full-time and 8.75 million were working part-time. 4.57 million were self-employed and 29.63 million were working as employees.

This page is updated when new data is published. The next source updates will be:

• ONS, Labour Market Statistics, 18 June 2026