UK jobs and wages data due as pay and hiring face test

By AtheneNet Economy Desk
Published: 18 August 2026

The Office for National Statistics is scheduled to publish its latest UK labour-market figures at 07:00 today, affecting workers, jobseekers and employers assessing pay and hiring conditions. The central questions are whether wages are still outpacing consumer prices and whether vacancies indicate strengthening or weakening demand for staff.

Useful details

• Today’s release covers employment, unemployment, inactivity, earnings and vacancies.
• The announcement page confirms the release time but does not contain the new estimates.
• July’s figures provide a dated benchmark, not a preview of today’s results.
• Short-term Labour Force Survey movements can be volatile and require careful interpretation.

Today’s figures will reset the July labour-market baseline

The ONS announcement confirms the timing and scope of the August release. It does not provide the new estimates, so no August employment rate, unemployment rate or earnings figure can be reported reliably before the statistical bulletin appears.

Each number also needs its reference period. Labour-market indicators are published across overlapping periods rather than as a single snapshot of 18 August. Any revisions to earlier estimates will matter when deciding whether conditions have genuinely changed.

The July ONS bulletin, published on 21 July, supplied the following baseline:

A movement in a rate must be described in percentage points, not simply as a percentage change. For example, a rise from 4.9% to 5.0% would be an increase of 0.1 percentage points.

Real pay will show whether earnings are staying ahead of prices

The headline earnings figures require several distinctions. Regular pay excludes bonuses, while total pay includes them. Nominal growth measures the increase before inflation; real growth shows the change after adjustment for the Consumer Prices Index.

July’s baseline indicated that both measures of pay were rising faster than CPI, but only modestly in the case of regular earnings. Real regular pay growth of 0.4% suggested limited improvement in average purchasing power, while the 1.3% total-pay increase was more affected by bonuses.

These are economy-wide averages. They do not mean every employee received a pay rise or that every household became better off. Sector, working hours, taxes and individual living costs can produce very different outcomes.

Vacancies and unemployment will test the strength of hiring

For jobseekers, the combination of unemployment and vacancies is more informative than either measure alone. Rising unemployment alongside falling vacancies would point to a more difficult search environment. Stable or increasing vacancies could indicate that employers still need staff, although the distribution of openings by industry and region also matters.

Employers will be watching for evidence of easing recruitment pressure. Slower nominal wage growth may reduce payroll pressure, but it can also weaken employees’ spending power if inflation is running at a similar or faster pace.

The vacancy estimate of 712,000 for April to June was provisional. Today’s publication may revise earlier numbers, so comparisons should use the latest published series rather than treating the July estimate as fixed.

Survey volatility limits conclusions from one release

The ONS cautions against overinterpreting short-term movements in Labour Force Survey estimates. Sampling variability means a single rise or fall may not establish a durable trend, particularly when changes are small.

PAYE Real Time Information offers a separate view of employees and payrolled employment, but its most recent estimates may also be provisional. It does not measure the labour market in exactly the same way as the Labour Force Survey.

The clearest reading will come from several indicators moving together: unemployment, employment, inactivity, vacancies, PAYE employee numbers and inflation-adjusted earnings. Today’s exact estimates, reference periods and revisions will determine whether the picture has materially changed from July.

Source: Office for National Statistics via GOV.UK