of the United Kingdom was at one of its highest ever levels, with 75 percent of the working-age population in some form of paid work. As of the most recent figures, there are approximately 31.7 million people
in the United Kingdom. In general, the UK labor market has been in good health ever since the
peaked at 8.5 percent in late 2011, following the global financial crisis of 2008. Even as
introduced a degree of economic uncertainty to the UK, the country's labor market continued to improve. While the arrival of the
pandemic in 2020 reversed these positive trends, the damage caused appears to have been temporary, with the most recent
from the UK government anticipating unemployment to remain at low levels of around four to 4.6 percent until at least 2028.
Characteristics of UK workers
The vast majority of the UK's workforce are employed in the
private sector, which employs around 27 million people, compared with the
public sector which has a workforce of approximately 5.9 million people. Within the UK private sector, the
industry sector which employs the most people is wholesale and retail trade, at over 4.9 million people. The National Health Service (NHS) is the
largest employer in the public sector at over 1.98 million people, and also the UK's single biggest employer overall. Although working patterns have become a lot more
flexible in recent years, most people in the UK are still working
full-time rather than
part-time. Another significant development in the labor force, is the increasing number of
self-employed workers which reached over five million in January 2020, before falling to around 4.2 million workers after COVID-19. The
share of people who work from home jumped to 17.4 percent in 2020, and is likely to increase further in coming years, as businesses and employers adapt to the possibilities of a more remote workforce.
Hours and earnings
Full-time workers in the United Kingdom had an
average annual salary of 34,963 British pounds, with
annual earnings for men being 37,382 pounds, and for women 31,672 pounds. While the
gender pay gap has been declining in recent years, there is evidently more work to be done to ensure men and women are afforded the same financial opportunities in the future. Other differences in pay exist between
regions, with Londoners earning around 13,170 pounds a year more than workers in North East England, while there are also significant differences in what people of
different ethnicities earn an hour. Overall, the UK workforce
collectively worked more than a billion hours a week at the end of 2023, with this figure at just 841 million in June 2020, which was the fewest cumulative hours worked since 1994 and a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no
liability for the information given being complete or correct.
Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date
data than referenced in the text.
