ONS labour market: 691,000 vacancies, a 2014 level, and pay up 3.7%

The Office for National Statistics published its October labour market figures on Tuesday 20 October at 7am. The short version: unemployment is marginally down, employment marginally up — and the number of vacancies is back where it was in 2014, if you leave the pandemic years aside. Here are the numbers in order.

How many job vacancies are there in the UK right now?

691,000 for July to September 2026. That is 21,000 fewer (2.9%) than in April to June, and 37,000 fewer (5.1%) than a year earlier. The quarterly drop is the largest since the start of the year: January to March also lost 21,000 vacancies.

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The figure that matters most is not the percentage but the historical marker. ONS states it plainly: outside the coronavirus period, the last time the country had 691,000 vacancies or fewer was July to September 2014, when the count stood at 686,000. On open positions, the market has rolled back twelve years.

ONS also names the reason employers give themselves. In its Vacancy Survey, smaller firms continue to say they may not be recruiting because of increases in labour costs.

Did unemployment rise or fall?

It fell, by a fraction of a point. The unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over was 4.7% in June to August 2026, down 0.1 percentage points both on the year and on the quarter.

Employment among 16 to 64 year olds went the other way: 75.3%, up 0.2 percentage points on both the year and the quarter. Economic inactivity — people who are neither working nor looking for work — stood at 20.9%, down 0.2 points on the year.

ONS describes the overall picture with one word: flat. The labour market has barely moved through 2026.

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Why are fewer people on a payroll?

This is a second count, and it comes not from a survey but from HMRC records of pay actually handed out. Over the year from August 2025 to August 2026, the number of payrolled employees fell by 111,000, or 0.4%. Between July and August, however, almost nothing moved: a rise of 1,000.

The early estimate for September puts the total at 30.3 million, down 66,000 (0.2%) on the year and up 13,000 on August. ONS warns that the September figure is provisional and will very likely be revised next month.

A separate gauge is the Claimant Count, which tracks people claiming unemployment-related benefits. In September 2026 it rose both on the month and on the year, to an estimated 1.701 million.

How much did pay grow over the year?

Regular pay, which excludes bonuses, grew 3.7% in June to August 2026. That rate has now held steady across six consecutive three-month periods, after a year of slowing growth.

Total pay including bonuses also grew 3.7%, but that is down from 3.9% in the previous quarter. Total pay was last lower than 3.7% in August to October 2020, when it stood at 2.8%. In other words, on the bonus-inclusive measure the country is at its weakest reading in nearly six years.

The gap between sectors remains wide: regular pay grew 6.3% in the public sector against 3.0% in the private sector. ONS notes that the public sector figure is affected by which months this year's pay awards landed in. Among private industries, finance and business services grew fastest at 3.3%.

What do those percentages mean for your wallet?

What counts is not the headline percentage but what survives inflation. In real terms, adjusted using the CPIH index, regular pay grew 0.6% over the year and total pay 0.7%. Adjusted using CPI, which excludes owner occupiers' housing costs, the figures are slightly kinder: 0.8% and 0.9%.

So pay is outrunning prices, but by less than one per cent a year. On a salary of £2,500 a month that is roughly £15 of real gain — about one supermarket trip.

What does this mean if you are job hunting?

The picture cuts both ways, and it is worth holding both halves at once. The headline measures, employment and unemployment, look calm and even slightly better than last year. But the number of open positions has been shrinking for three quarters running, and the employers stepping back from hiring are specifically the smaller ones.

The practical reading is straightforward. Competition for each vacancy is sharper than a year ago, and salary negotiations are happening in a market where pay growth has sat near 3.7% for a year without accelerating. If you are discussing a raise right now, 3.7% is the benchmark your employer is measuring "normal" against.

The next ONS release lands in November, and the September payroll figures will almost certainly be revised in it.

Our read of the September ONS release — "UK vacancies at their lowest since 2014".