HMRC Payrolls Change

HMRC Payrolls Change reports UK payrolled employees and pay from Pay As You Earn payroll tax records and Real Time Information employer reports. HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs) and ONS (Office for National Statistics) publish these monthly accredited statistics for the full payroll population, not a sample. Monthly employment is the average of daily job counts; it excludes self employment, pensions, rental and investment income. It spans July 2014 with monthly bulletins since December 2019 and differs by design from LFS (household survey) employment, Workforce Jobs and Average Weekly Earnings.

Each release covers a calendar month, measured as the average of daily payrolled job counts. Reports flow in real time and are extracted within a week after month end. The release appears around mid next month at 7am with the Labour market overview and related bulletins. Flash estimates appear two to three weeks after month end using 85% of reports with 15% estimated, revising to 98% to 99% next month.

Revisions cover two tax years with a yearly refresh, and January and February see larger year end revisions.

The release moves with employee counts, pay levels and their regional, industry and age splits. There is no threshold; it is read as rises and falls.

• Payrolled employees: UK employees paid via payroll, seasonally adjusted headcount with monthly and yearly change.
• Median monthly pay: middle earner pay based on gross pay.
• Mean monthly pay and aggregate pay: total pay divided by employee count, pulled by high and low earners. The total pay bill moves with jobs and pay.
• Pay distribution: tenth, ninetieth and ninety-ninth percentile pay levels, median pay growth and flows in and out.
• Regional and age splits: regions by residence, not workplace, and ages at payment.
• Industry splits and revisions triangle: jobs and pay by SIC codes; the triangle shows each month across vintages.

The October 15, 2024 bulletin showed 30.3 million payrolled employees in September 2024, up 113,000 (0.4%) on the year but down 15,000 on August 2024. Median pay was GBP 2,397, up 5.3% on the year, yet wholesale and retail rose 8.2% while transportation and storage fell 2.9%. August 2024 monthly change revised from minus 59,000 to minus 35,000 as fuller reports replaced estimates. Pay percentiles for the three months to August 2024 were GBP 791, GBP 5,508 and GBP 15,567.

1. Payment records: Each calculation starts from pay amount, pay date, job start and leaving dates and reported pay frequency. Records are Full Payment Submissions carrying Individual Payment Submissions.
2. Daily rate: Payments become a daily rate dividing weekly pay by 7 and monthly pay by 30.4. For example, GBP 700 a week equals GBP 100 a day, paid in arrears.
3. Monthly averaging: Daily job counts and pay sum to daily totals averaged across the calendar month. Part month jobs count fractionally. A job starting on the 16th of a 30 day month on GBP 3,040 counts as 0.5 at the full rate.
4. Frequency cleaning: If gaps between payments miss the reported frequency three times but match another frequency, the statistical frequency changes to the observed one. A missed payment followed by a near double payment then normal pay counts as a single delayed payment over two periods, not missed work.
5. Missing reports: Jobs with no new report carry forward last pay with weight w, grown by past growth, within 14 months. New jobs scale up reports for past bias, or use a macro nowcast below 5%, then build matching artificial records.
6. Industry and seasonal adjustment: Industry codes use SIC codes from quarterly business registers and Companies House, refreshed yearly. Large firms take the code with most employees. Medians, means, percentiles and flows are computed, then key series are adjusted with X13-ARIMA, reviewed yearly in autumn. Seasonal models are re-estimated monthly, and January and February see larger year end revisions.