September increase in NMD claimants

THER has been a sharp rise in the number of claimants in Newry, Mourne and Down.

Latest data for the month of September puts the total number of claimants at 3,385.

Of those claimants 1,645 were males with 1,745 females.

However, year on year , the claimant count has fallen by 445, representing an 11.6% decrease.

In ABC Local Government area the number of climants in September was recorded at 4,115.

The number of female claimants was 2,050 compred with 1,410 males.

Labour Market results continue to highlight a slowing down of the labour market within Northern Ireland. Across all sources, changes in the employment levels over the year have been relatively small. Although there was an increase in payrolled employee numbers from the HMRC payroll data, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows a decrease in the employment rate, with increases in both the unemployment rate and the economic inactivity rate.

The latest HMRC payroll data shows that payrolled employees increased by 0.2% over the month and increased by 1.0% over the year. Payrolled earnings were up 1.4% over the month and were 6.9% higher than September 2024.

Households reported, via the Labour Force Survey (LFS), over the year to June-August 2025, increases in both the unemployment rate (by 0.8pps to 2.6%) and the economic inactivity rate (by 0.4pps to 26.9%), while the employment rate decreased by 1.1pps to 71.2%. None of these annual changes were statistically significant.

The total number of hours worked in June-August 2025 decreased by 0.4% over the year, to 28.7million hours per week. This figure is 1.1% below the pre-pandemic position recorded in December-February 2020 and is 5.9% below the highest level recorded in this time series (30.5 million hours per week, in September-November 2019).

In September 2025, the Department was notified of 100 confirmed redundancies, bringing the rolling twelve-month total of confirmed redundancies to 2,350, which was similar to the figure for the previous year (2,310). In addition, 240 proposed redundancies were notified to the Department in September 2025. The annual total of proposed redundancies was 2,910, just below the figure for the previous year (3,000). Both the twelve-month totals of proposed and confirmed redundancies are similar to the levels seen in the decade preceding the pandemic.

Finally, there was an increase of 2.9% in the claimant count estimate over the month to September 2025 from the revised figure for August 2025. The claimant count rate for September 2025 also increased, to 3.8%, from the revised rate for August 2025 of 3.7%.