Unemployment rate of the UK 2000-2024
The unemployment rate of the United Kingdom was 4.3 percent in October 2024, unchanged from the previous month. Before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK had relatively low levels of unemployment, comparable with the mid-1970s. Between January 2000 and the most recent month, unemployment was highest in November 2011 when the unemployment rate hit 8.5 percent.
Tight labor market loosens in 2023
After reaching 5.1 percent in January 2021, the UK unemployment fell throughout that year and into 2022, eventually reaching a low of just 3.5 percent in August 2022. This was followed by a slight uptick in unemployment, which corresponded with other signs of a cooling labor market in 2023. The number of job vacancies in the UK has been falling since reaching a peak of 1.3 million in May 2022, falling to a two-year low of 934,000 in December 2023. Recent forecasts suggest that the average unemployment rate for the whole of 2023 was 4.3 percent, increasing to 4.6 percent in 2024 and 2025 before gradually falling in the following years.
Demographics of the unemployed
Ever since the UK unemployment rate for men first overtook that of women in the late 1980s, it has almost always been higher, with a gap of almost three percent recorded in early 1993. During the financial crisis at the end of the 2000s, the unemployment rate for women peaked at 7.8 percent, whereas for men, the rate was 9.1 percent. Unemployment is also heavily associated with age, and young people in general are far more vulnerable to unemployment than older age groups. In late 2011, for example, the unemployment rate for those aged between 16 and 24 reached almost 22.5 percent, compared with 8.3 percent for people aged 25 to 34, while older age groups had even lower peaks during this time.