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Dr Sangwoo Lee, Assistant Professor, Institute for Employment Research said "Today's release confirms a labour market in structural transition. Unemployment has risen to 5.2%, its highest since late 2020, even as economic inactivity continued declining to 20.7%. Rather than signalling genuine recovery, this pattern suggests a return to work that an increasingly slack labour market is struggling to absorb, with rising unemployment reflecting insufficient demand to accommodate those re-entering the workforce."

The latest UK labour market data confirms the transformation anticipated in previous quarters, with modest headline improvements obscuring significant structural changes. Unemployment rose to 4.7%, the highest since early 2021, whilst employment rates edged up to 75.2%.

Evidence based research on , commissioned by Country Durham and led by dmh associates, with contributions from the IER, has just been published.

"While the employment rate remains steady at 74.9%, several indicators signal growing strains. Redundancies have risen by 67.8% year-on-year—increasing to 99,000 from 59,000, the proportion of long-term unemployment has grown significantly, and the unemployment rate has climbed to 4.3%. These developments reflect a fundamental structural adjustment in labour market conditions rather than a temporary fluctuation."

On April 15 2024, IER convened a meeting which brought together stakeholders to discuss concepts and ideas related to a ‘healthy labour market’.

The discussion was led by Prof Chris Warhurst, Prof Peter Elias and Dr Jamelia Harris, and centred on the need for new measures (beyond measures of employment, unemployment and inactivity) which better capture an evolving labour market and recognise the needs and interests of different groups in the labour market.