UK labour market: jobs, pay, tightness (ONS)

Commercial use OKFreshLicense: OGL-UK-3.0

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Headline UK labour-market indicators from the Office for National Statistics (keyless ONS beta API): the 16+ unemployment rate and 16-64 employment rate (seasonally adjusted), total UK vacancies, whole-economy average-weekly-earnings total-pay growth and the unemployed level -- plus the vacancy-unemployment ratio, the headline tightness gauge. One row per (indicator, period) with exact year-on-year changes (percentage points for rates, percent for levels; gaps never bridged) and deterministic row hashes. Monthly from 1971 (vacancies/pay from 2001); latest prints 2026-06/2026-07. Who joins this: hiring planners read vacancy_unemployment_ratio for wage-pressure timing; macro desks watch unemployment_rate against pay_growth for the wage-price pass-through; recruiters benchmark employment_rate for labour supply.

Source: ONS UK Labour Intelligence
Rows: 2,907
Columns: 10
Source cadence: Monthly
Last refreshed: Oct 10, 2026
Theme: economy

Column	Type	Description
indicator_code	string	Machine code for the indicator (unemployment_rate, employment_rate, vacancies, pay_growth, unemployed_thousands, vacancy_unemployment_ratio). Panel join key with period. (unit: string)
indicator_name	string	Human-readable indicator name from the ONS timeseries description. (unit: string)
period	string	Reference period as YYYY-MM. LFS labels are rolling quarters (e.g. '1971 FEB' means Jan-Mar); the label month is kept verbatim. (unit: string)
period_start	date	First calendar day of the reference period. (unit: date)
year	integer	Calendar year of period_start. (unit: year)
value	float	Indicator value in the stated unit, parsed verbatim from the ONS payload. Honestly null nowhere: an unparseable upstream value fails the ingest loudly. (unit: varies)
unit	string	Unit of value: percent (rates), thousands (vacancies, unemployed), ratio (tightness gauge). (unit: string)
yoy_change_pp	float	Year-on-year change in percentage points for rate indicators and the tightness ratio (value minus the exact same month one year earlier); null for level indicators and the first 12 months of each series. Gaps are never bridged. (unit: percentage_points)
yoy_change_pct	float	Year-on-year percent change for level indicators (100 * (value - base) / base against the exact same month one year earlier); null for rate indicators and the first 12 months of each level series. Gaps are never bridged. (unit: percent)
row_hash	string	Deterministic 16-hex sha256 of indicator_code + period + value + the YoY changes (idempotency key). (unit: string)

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

indicator_code	indicator_name	period	period_start	year	value	unit	yoy_change_pp	yoy_change_pct	row_hash
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-02	1971-02-01	1,971	72.2	percent	—	—	ecb24c0bbc9c79dc
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-03	1971-03-01	1,971	72.1	percent	—	—	3c386beb0fcf0101
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-04	1971-04-01	1,971	72	percent	—	—	6058a2e46d1e3ccc
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-05	1971-05-01	1,971	72	percent	—	—	1c21493dc9d3839b
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-06	1971-06-01	1,971	71.9	percent	—	—	45ebddb2c342db2f
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-07	1971-07-01	1,971	71.8	percent	—	—	61868736b10773d6
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-08	1971-08-01	1,971	71.7	percent	—	—	362c56b773437320
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-09	1971-09-01	1,971	71.6	percent	—	—	207fa26d9236d2b3
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-10	1971-10-01	1,971	71.5	percent	—	—	70bbbcd5a55043cc
employment_rate	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted	1971-11	1971-11-01	1,971	71.5	percent	—	—	ee4a1613066d9501

Profiled Oct 10, 2026 from snapshot 20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7

Measured

Completeness: 89.8%
Rows: 2,907
Columns: 10
Columns with gaps: 2

Rows per yearperiod · 1971–2026 · 56 years

19712026

Column	Missing	Distinct	Range	Distribution
indicator_codevarchar	0%	6	—	employment_rate665 unemployed_thousands665 unemployment_rate665
indicator_namevarchar	0%	6	—	Employment rate, aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted665 Unemployed, aged 16 and over, seasonally adjusted665 Unemployment rate, aged 16 and over, seasonally adjusted665
periodvarchar	0%	687	—	2001-056 2001-066 2001-076
period_startdate	0%	726	Feb 1, 1971 → Jul 1, 2026	—
yearbigint	0%	53	1,971 → 2,026median 2,006
valuedouble	0%	1,373	-6 → 3,278median 70.5	60 outside 1st–99th percentile
unitvarchar	0%	3	—	percent1,637 thousands968 ratio302
yoy_change_ppdouble	35%	553	-10 → 15median 0.0117	38 outside 1st–99th percentile
yoy_change_pctdouble	67.5%	771	-58.92 → 157.43median -0.3112	20 outside 1st–99th percentile
row_hashvarchar	0%	2,438	—	0000c160925a90aa1 0014af5f3ea1dce21 006bd2dcf605a1651

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/ons_uk_labour_intel/uk_labour_market_panel" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/ons_uk_labour_intel/uk_labour_market_panel").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/ons_uk_labour_intel/uk_labour_market_panel

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.

Cite this snapshot

Pinned to snapshot 20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.

APA

ONS UK Labour Intelligence. (2026). UK labour market: jobs, pay, tightness (ONS) [Data set, snapshot 20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7, sha256 70ad31f1a7a7]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-10-10, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/ons_uk_labour_intel/uk_labour_market_panel?snapshot=20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7

BibTeX

@misc{dz_ons_uk_labour_intel_uk_labour_market_pan_70ad31f1,
  title        = {{UK labour market: jobs, pay, tightness (ONS)}},
  author       = {{ONS UK Labour Intelligence}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Datazimuts},
  howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/ons_uk_labour_intel/uk_labour_market_panel?snapshot=20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7}},
  note         = {Snapshot 20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7, sha256 70ad31f1a7a7748c97edfe2a29429e0a5f38f5bbf679e80cccb88658702c84db; accessed 2026-10-10}
}

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<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=ons_uk_labour_intel%2Fuk_labour_market_panel&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20261010T003842Z-70ad31f1a7a7&x=period&y=year&agg=avg" title="UK labour market: jobs, pay, tightness (ONS)" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>