Alongside the summary of key points below, you can view an interactive web-based version of our London labour market update.

The update now includes a section on median pay for payrolled employees living in the capital, including an adjustment for inflation. We have also introduced a comment on the latest statistics.

To complement our London-level update, you can find the more in-depth analysis of Claimant Count data for London boroughs here.

Read an ad-hoc analysis on post-pandemic inactivity trends in London, with a focus on the over 50s age group.

Previous updates and other labour market analyses are also available.

• The most timely estimate of payrolled employees shows an increase of around 14,700, or 0.3%, in London between April and May 2022 and was 1.2% above pre-pandemic (February 2020) levels.
• The employment rate in London was estimated at 75.1% for the three months ending April 2022, down 0.6 percentage points (pp) on the previous quarter and up 0.7pp on the same period in the previous year. London’s employment rate was slightly higher than the UK average (75.6%).
• The unemployment rate continued to fall from its pandemic peak but was still higher than the UK average. London’s unemployment rate was estimated at 4.8%, down 0.1pp on the quarter and down 1.8pp from a year earlier. The UK average was 3.8%.
• London’s inactivity rate (the measure of those not looking and/or not available to work) was estimated at 20.9%. This was up 0.8pp on the previous year and up 0.6pp on the previous quarter but remained lower than the UK-wide estimate of 21.3%.
• The total number of workforce jobs increased by 92,500, or 1.6%, between the fourth quarter of 2021 and first quarter of 2022, and was 17,600, or 0.3%, below pre-pandemic (December 2019) levels. While employee jobs have recovered, self-employed jobs remained 13% below pre-pandemic levels.