UK labour market Jan 2021 - Release 6

Unemployment and redundancy rates data use, ‘Wholesale and Retail Trade; Repair of Vehicles and Motorcycles’ as the nearest proxy to represent the automotive sector. However, the data used for this section does include other retail and wholesale sectors which may not be automotive; this is likely to have effected some of the findings.

Redundancy levels in the sector continue to rise, although not as steeply as last month. For example, the period from September to November 2020 was at 69,000; the highest since 2009. Redundancy levels are currently almost 4 times higher compared to the same period last year and have increased by 2% in the past month. The redundancy rate in the sector is currently 19%, which has fallen slightly in the past month by 0.2%. It is also 4.8 percentage points higher than the ‘All Industries’ rate. It has the 6^th highest rate of the 14 outlined industries.

Unemployment levels in the sector have decreased by 3% in the past month but are 22% higher compared to the same time period last year.

Total hours worked are still low but continuing to show signs of recovery, however they are still at the lowest levels since records began.

For October to December 2020, there were an estimated 9,000 vacancies in the Motor Trade sub sector; this is an increase of 29% since last month and more than 3 times more than the recorded low levels in April – June 2020. The motor trade vacancies ratio is 1.5 which is 0.4 or 27% lower that the all vacancy rate.