ONS (Office for National Statistics) reported UK vacancies at 705,000 for February to April, the lowest since the same period in 2021 and now below the pre-pandemic baseline1. That breaks the 711,000 five-year low recorded a month earlier and the long 721,000 plateau before it. Real wage growth has fallen to 0.1% on a CPIH-adjusted basis (Consumer Prices Index including housing costs), down from 0.4%, leaving pay flat against prices.
Payrolled employment held at 210,000 down year on year, confirming the prior reading was no anomaly. The ONS still attaches no AI breakdown to any of it. The statistical apparatus records the contraction with precision and names no cause for it.
For scale, the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee used 500,000 additional unemployed as its AI worst case. The UK is now absorbing 210,000 fewer payrolled workers a year, already two-fifths of the way to that stress scenario, through a measurement system that cannot say whether AI is the driver. A reader looking for the cause in the official data will not find it labelled there.
