Northern Ireland employment rate returns to pre-pandemic peak

Northern Ireland's employment rate has returned to its pre-pandemic peak of 72.4% official figures suggest.

The employment rate measures the percentage of working-age adults who are in a job.

It last reached 72.4% in the autumn of 2019 and fell back to 67.9% during the pandemic.

Other measures also suggest that the jobs market remains relatively strong despite some recent high-profile redundancy announcements.

The rate of economic inactivity has fallen to 25.9% matching the rate in the summer of 2019.

Someone is classed as economically inactive if they are not in work and not looking for work.

That includes people who are retired, in full-time education, sick or disabled and those with caring responsibilities.

Northern Ireland has consistently had the highest rate of inactivity of any UK region and that continues; the average UK rate is 21%.

The new figures, covering the February to April quarter, show the most common reason for economic inactivity among the working age population was long-term sickness.

Of those inactive, 39.8%, or 120,000 people, cited long-term sickness, which is the highest level since these figures have been recorded.

Pre-pandemic, in November to January 2020, long-term sickness accounted for 34.3% of the total.

Meanwhile a different measurement, the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) points to a diverging jobs performance between the service sector and other parts of the economy.

The QES surveys about 6,000 companies, covering all employers with 25 or more employees and all public sector employers.

It suggests that over the last year the services sector, which is the dominant part of the economy has added almost 24,000 jobs while manufacturing has lost 1,000 jobs and construction has lost 300.

There were also differences within manufacturing: employment fell in food production but increased in both pharmaceuticals and transport equipment.

In the services sector the biggest growth over the year was in hospitality, which saw the number of jobs increase by more than 4,500 or almost 12%.