Alongside the summary of key points, you can find our London labour market update on the London Datastore.

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

Previous updates and other labour market analyses are also available.

• The most timely estimate of payrolled employees shows an increase of around 9,460, or 0.2%, in London between July and August 2022 and was 1.8% above pre-pandemic (February 2020) levels.
• The employment rate in London was estimated at 74.8% for the three months ending July 2022, down 0.3 percentage points (pp) on the previous quarter and down 0.1pp on the same period in the previous year. London’s employment rate was lower than the UK average (75.4%).
• 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 4.2%, down 0.6pp on the quarter and down 1.8pp from a year earlier. The UK average was 3.6%.
• London’s inactivity rate (the measure of those not looking and/or not available to work) was estimated at 21.7%. This was up 1.4pp on the previous year and up 0.8pp on the previous quarter and is now the same as the UK-wide estimate of 21.7%.
• The total number of workforce jobs increased by 89,200, or 1.5%, between the first quarter of 2022 and second quarter of 2022, and was 47,000, or 0.8%, above pre-pandemic (December 2019) levels. This is the first quarter in which workforce jobs exceeded the pre-pandemic peak.