Using standard International Labour Organisation (ILO) criteria, an estimated 2,833,100 persons were in employment in Q4 2025, up 2.0% (56,700) from 2,776,400 in Q4 2024.
The increase of 56,700 (+2.0%) in employment is composed of increases of 38,400 (+2.6%) for males and 18,200 (+1.4%) for females in the year to Q4 2025.
The employment rate for those aged 15-64 was 74.5% in Q4 2025 compared to 74.3% in Q4 2024 and 74.0% in Q4 2023. In Q4 2025, the employment rate for males aged 15-64 years was 78.4%, compared to 70.6% for females. See PxStat table QLF18.
See Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data Sources outputs for employment estimates based on administrative data for employees.
The economic sectors that saw the largest year-on-year increases in employment in Q4 2025 were:
Breaking these increases down to NACE division (2-digit level), the year-on-year increase seen in Industry (B-E) was primarily driven by increases in division 21 Manufacture of Basic Pharmaceutical Products (+12,000) and division 32 Other Manufacturing (+8,100). See PxStat table QES01.
The largest decrease in employment by economic sector in Q4 2025 was observed in:
The fall in employment in Information & Communication was driven by a decrease in division 62 Computer Programming & Consultancy (-15,800).
Almost two-thirds of those in employment in Q4 2025 stated that they never work at home (1,865,600).
Of the 956,700 people who reported that they work from home at least some of the time in Q4 2025, 530,500 said that they usually (more than half the time) work from home, down from a peak of 846,700 in Q1 2021.
There were 426,300 people who sometimes (at least one hour in the reference period) worked from home in Q4 2025, down from 432,800 in Q4 2024. See PxStat table QES20.
The estimated total number of hours worked per week in Q4 2025 stood at 88.1 million hours, up by 2.5 million hours or 2.9% on Q4 2024, and up 5.6 million hours (+6.8%) on Q4 2023. See Figure 2.3.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the numbers in employment in Q4 2025 stood at 2,834,300 after a rise of 15,300 (+0.5%) from the previous quarter. This follows on from a seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter increase in employment of 7,500 (+0.3%) in Q3 2025.
The seasonally adjusted number of males in employment was up by 16,900 (-1.1%) over the quarter to 1,504,000 in Q4 2025, while the corresponding number for females was up 5,600 (+0.4%) to 1,332,700 over the same period. See PxStat table QLF03.
See Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data Sources outputs for seasonally adjusted employment estimates based on administrative data for employees.
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