The UK jobs market has continued to cool as vacancies fell and the number of people on payrolls dropped, the latest official figures suggest.
Job openings fell by 5.8% to 718,000 between May to July across nearly all industries, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It said there was evidence that some firms may not be recruiting new workers or replacing people who have left.
However, the slowdown was not as sharp as some economists had anticipated.
Average wage growth remained at 5%, the unemployment rate was unmoved at 4.7% and an estimated drop in people on payrolls – down 8,000 between June and July – signalled a “very gradual cooling”, according to former Bank of England policymaker Andrew Sentence.
He pointed out that there are more than 30 million people on employer payrolls in the UK.
Ashley Webb, UK economist for Capital Economics, said the “modest fall” in payroll data “suggests that the fallout in the jobs market from the rise in business taxes and the minimum wage” is calming down.
In April, the National Living Wage rose from £11.44 to £12.21.
At the same time, National Insurance Contribution by employers rose from 13.5% to 15% while the salary threshold triggering payment by firm was lowered from £9,100 a year to £5,000.
Although the number of job openings fell, it did not feed through to a rise in the unemployment rate, Mr Webb said.
He added that firms giving notice of redundancies was “relatively subdued” in July.
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