Northern Ireland job market holding up despite economy concerns

Northern Ireland's job market is holding up despite growing concerns about the economic impact of energy prices and wider inflation.

In recent weeks, a series of small hospitality businesses have closed, mainly due to energy costs.

However, that is so far not showing up in the wider employment data.

HMRC figures suggests almost 778,000 people were on company payrolls in August, an increase of 0.2% compared to July.

Meanwhile, claimant count for unemployment was 35,600 or 3.8% of the workforce, unchanged from the previous month's revised figure.

An additional measure, the quarterly employment survey (QES), also suggests the economy was still creating jobs during the early summer.

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

It suggests that during the quarter from April to June, the private sector added more than 22,000 jobs compared to the same period last year.

That was an increase of 4%, bringing employee job numbers to a record high of 578,640.

About half those additional jobs were in hospitality and retail, likely reflecting recovery from the affects of the pandemic.

Private sector jobs also increased compared to the first quarter of 2022, up by 0.8% or 4,830 jobs.

However, the manufacturing sector experienced a loss of about 1,500 jobs over the quarter.

Despite the relatively resilient performance, measures of total Northern Ireland employment, including the employment rate and total hours worked, have not returned to their pre-pandemic position.

A significant reason for that is a weak recovery in self employment.