Jobless rate falls but small firms cut back hiring

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1. 1

   Jobless rate falls but small firms cut back hiring

   BBC NewsPublished Oct 20, 2026Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “The UK's unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest for more than year, but job vacancies have continued to fall as smaller businesses cut back on recruitment, official figures indicate. The jobless rate fell to 4.7% in the three months to August, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, the lowest since July last year. However, vacancies fell by 21,000 in the three months to September to 691,000, with the ONS saying small firms were citing labour costs as a key factor in scaling back hiring. The figures are the last official snapshot of the jobs market before the Budget, and analysts said they indicated the jobs market was showing signs of recovery despite the weakness in hiring. ONS deputy director of labour market statistics, David Freeman, said the labour market remained "broadly flat", with the latest data showing the employment rate edging up and "a small drop in unemployment". "The number of workers on payroll remains slightly down over the same period, though data for the most recent month suggests that might be starting to level off," he said. "The number of vacancies has seen its largest fall since the start of the year, concentrated mainly within smaller businesses, which cite increased labour costs as a key factor." Energy costs have risen since the Iran war began, and companies have also said that increases in National Insurance and the minimum wage have made it more expensive to employ staff.”

2. 2

   Projecting Labour Market Imbalances and Skill Mismatch Under Demographic Change in the EU.

   European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie (Marois et al.)Published Dec 4, 2025Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “Consequently, underutilization of high-skilled workers is projected to coexist with persistent vacancies in medium- and low-skilled occupations. Rather than indicating widespread labour shortages, these trends point to structural mismatches driven by the misalignment of worker qualifications, job characteristics, and hiring practices. To explore potential responses, we examine a series of policy scenarios such as expanded immigration, education reform, mid-career retraining, delayed retirement, and employer-led automation and upskilling. The findings show that, while certain policies can reduce specific mismatches, no single intervention closes all the gaps that emerge. Notably, automation reduces vacancies but increases underutilization, whereas human capital strategies shift mismatches across skill levels. These results suggest that addressing future labour mismatches will require coordinated, comprehensive and varied strategies that integrate demographic realities with evolving job demands in Europe's ageing and increasingly digitalized and knowledge-based economies.”

3. 3

   Unemployment in the United Kingdom (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaChecked Oct 20, 2026

   “Unemployment in the United Kingdom is measured by the Office for National Statistics. As of July 2025, the U.K. unemployment rate was 4.7%, up from 3.8% in February 2024. In 2024, there were 11 million economically inactive people in the UK. In the three-month figures (July to September 2022) the unemployment rate was estimated at 3.6%, which is 0.2 percentage points lower than the previous three-month period. The ONS said the employment rate, or percentage of people in work for those aged between 16 and 64, was estimated to be 75.5%. This was largely unchanged compared with the previous three-month period and 1.1 percentage points lower than before the pandemic (December 2019 to February 2020). The economic inactivity rate (is the proportion of people aged between 16 and 64 years who are not in the labour force) was 21.6%. The figures are compiled through the Labour Force Survey, which asks a sample of 53,000 households and is conducted every 3 months. Unemployment levels and rates are published each month by the Office for National Statistics in the Labour Market Statistical Bulletin. Estimates are available by sex, age, duration of unemployment and by area of the UK.”

4. 4

   Youth unemployment in the United Kingdom (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaChecked Oct 20, 2026

   “Youth unemployment in the United Kingdom is the level of unemployment among young people, typically defined as those aged 16–24. A related concept is graduate unemployment which is the level of unemployment among university graduates. Statistics for March to May 2025 show that there are 628,000 young people from the ages 16–25 who are unemployed which equates to an unemployment rate of 14.2% among young people. This is up from 31,000 (13.8%) the year before.”

5. 5

   Contrasting the Local and National Demographic Incidence of Local Labour Demand Shocks.

   Economic journal (London, England) (Mansfield)Published Sep 22, 2025Checked Oct 20, 2026

   “Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data featuring millions of job transitions facilitate estimation of a rich two-sided labour market assignment model. The model generates simulated forecasts of many alternative local demand shocks featuring different establishment compositions and local areas. Workers within 10 miles receive only 11.2% (6.6%) of nationwide welfare (employment) short-run gains, with at least 35.9% (62.0%) accruing to out-of-state workers, despite much larger per-worker impacts for the closest workers. Local incidence by demographic category is very sensitive to shock composition, but different shocks produce similar demographic incidence further from the shock. Furthermore, the remaining heterogeneity in incidence at the state or national level can reverse patterns of heterogeneous demographic impacts at the local level. Overall, the results suggest that reduced-form approaches using distant locations as controls can produce accurate estimates of local shock impacts on local workers, but that the distribution of local impacts badly approximates shocks' statewide or national incidence.”