Redundancies
Slight fall in rate to 7.5 per 1,000 employees
Redundancy rates: by industry, United Kingdom
The UK redundancy rate has been relatively constant since 1995. Although there was a rise during the final quarter of 2002, overall it was down on the previous year – falling from 8.6 redundancies per 1,000 employees in Winter 2001/2 to 7.5 in Winter 2002/3.
Apart from the banking, finance and insurance sectors, redundancy rates fell across all sectors during the year. Manufacturing continued to have the highest redundancy rate at 16.1 per 1,000 employees in Winter 2002/3, only slightly lower than in the previous year. The service sector redundancy rate fell from 6.3 to 5.1 per 1,000 employees in the year to Winter 2002/3.
Redundancy rates fell for both men and women in the year to Winter 2002/3 – from 10.7 to 9.6 per 1,000 male employees and from 6.2 to 5.2 per 1,000 female employees.
Redundancy rates decreased across most age groups over the year. Those aged 50 and over experienced the biggest decrease, from 8.9 to 6.7 per 1,000 employees. The next largest fall was for those aged 35 to 49, whose rate decreased from 7.4 to 6.1 per 1,000 employees. The only age group who did not see a reduction in redundancy rates were those aged 16 to 24, where the rate was unchanged at 10.2 per 1,000 employees.
Re-employment rates have been fairly erratic. There are signs that re-employment became more difficult during 2001, and that this continued during 2002. The overall re-employment rate fell from 39.9 to 33.6 per cent during 2002, the lowest rate since records began in spring 1995. There were falls across all age groups but the youngest age group (16 to 24 year olds) were particularly hit, with the rate falling from 46.4 to 32.2 per cent.
Source: Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics
Notes: Redundancy rate: the ratio of the number of redundancies in one quarter to the number of employees in the previous quarter, measured as redundancies per 1000 employees.
Re-employment rate: the percentage of those made redundant within the previous three months who were in employment during the reference week.
These Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates are not seasonally adjusted and have not been adjusted to take account of the Census 2001 results.
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