Average weekly hours of work and total number of people in employment
• In the second quarter of 2005, there were 30.8 million jobs in the economy, one of the largest numbers ever recorded. Of these, 26.7 million (87 per cent) were employee jobs.
• Employment in service sector jobs grew from 61 per cent of the total in 1978 to 82 per cent in 2005. Over the same period employment in manufacturing fell from 28 per cent to 12 per cent.
• People are increasingly choosing to work fewer hours and the level of part-time working has grown. As a result, the average hours worked by individuals has had a downwards trend since a peak at the end of 1994.
• In the three months to May 2005 there were 639,100 vacancies in the economy. The industry with the largest number of vacancies in this period was distribution, hotels and restaurants with 188,100 vacancies.
• The redundancy rate has declined since the latest peak observed in the winter quarter of 2001. In the summer quarter of 2005 it stood at 6.1 per thousand employees, having reached 5.2 per thousand in spring 2005, a record low since comparable records began in 1995.
• Overall, the proportion of employees receiving job-related training has increased from 26 per cent in 1995 to 31 per cent in 2005.
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Economic & Labour Market Review (ELMR) – February 2009