{"id":1023,"date":"2025-07-17T18:13:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/1023\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T18:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:13:18","slug":"unemployment-rate-rises-in-northern-ireland-and-wage-growth-slows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/1023\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment rate rises in Northern Ireland and wage growth slows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clodagh Rice<\/p>\n

BBC News NI Business Correspondent<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

The number of workers on company payrolls in Northern Ireland fell slightly last month, but is still higher than the same time last year<\/p>\n

The unemployment rate in Northern Ireland from March to May rose to 2.1%.<\/p>\n

That is an increase on the previous quarter and on the same time last year and is the first quarterly rise in almost two years.<\/p>\n

The typical monthly pay packet was \u00a32,344 in Northern Ireland in June – \u00a328 lower than May, but still \u00a326 higher than last year.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland was the lowest earning region in the UK in June, and had the smallest annual pay increase of the 12 UK regions.<\/p>\n

The number of workers on company payrolls in Northern Ireland fell slightly last month to 809,200, but is still higher than the same time last year.<\/p>\n

The proportion of people in work, or the employment rate, rose over the quarter to 72.1%, however it is still lower than the same time last year.<\/p>\n

The number of people not in work nor looking for a job – known as the economic inactivity rate – improved over the quarter, falling to 26.3%, but that is still slightly higher than last summer.<\/p>\n

The most common reason was “long-term sick” accounting for 39.3% of the total economically inactive.<\/p>\n

‘Bad combination’<\/p>\n

Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Agency Mark McAllister said: “Today’s statistics, combined with a surprise rise in inflation, make a bad combination especially with pending pay negotiations and the potential for pay-related disputes.”<\/p>\n

“Whilst long-term trends are not in place, there does not seem to be a let-up in employees bemoaning the cost of living and employers bemoaning the cost of doing business,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clodagh Rice BBC News NI Business Correspondent Getty Images The number of workers on company payrolls in Northern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}