Labour Market Report – April 2026
Labour Market Overview
The latest ONS Labour Market Overview shows that:
Government Policy
Landmark legislation came into effect on 9th April giving disabled benefit claimants the right to try work without immediately triggering benefit reassessment. This applies to claimants receiving new-style Employment and Support Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, and the Universal Credit health element. The government has also announced or expanded a range of support measures, including:
- The first Young Futures Hubs – County Durham is one of the first areas to participate with the first Hub opening in Newton Aycliffe in 2026
- A further 80 Youth Hubs to support 16 to 24-year-olds
- 27 Neighbourhood Health Centres to open by 2027 – Seaham Primary Care Centre being one of the first to receive funding to strengthen and future proof its facilities.
- Continued rollout of Pathways to Work advisers – the target to help 65,000 people over the past year has been exceeded, with free, voluntary and personalised support from Pathways to Work advisers.
- Further work under Keep Britain Working
These initiatives all support the government’s broader attempt to tackle economic inactivity, particularly inactivity linked to health conditions and long-term sickness.
The government has published the outcome of the consultation on mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. The government has confirmed that it will introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for employers with 250 employees or more. Employers with fewer than 250 employees are encouraged to voluntarily report, but not legally required to do so.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has published new guidance to help employers understand how to handle whistleblowing in the workplace, setting out legal duties and best practice for dealing with reports of wrongdoing.
The government has published its response to the consultation on introducing a statutory right for trade unions to access workplaces, setting out how the new framework will operate in practice.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a major public consultation on proposed reforms to the UK’s workplace incident reporting framework (RIDDOR), marking the first significant review of the system in over a decade.
AI
The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has published Recruitment rewired: an update on ICO’s work on the fair and responsible use of automation in recruitment. They found that employers must improve their transparency measures to ensure they adequately inform candidates about their use of automation and automated decision making in recruitment. The ICO also reported 13,457 data security incidents in 2025, a 10% increase on the previous year with employee data featuring heavily.
British Chamber of Commerce research suggests AI adoption is rising sharply, but more firms say it has not yet reduced headcount. Careerminds UK found many employers regret aspects of AI linked redundancy decisions with over 91% saying that if they were to do the redundancies again, they would approach it differently. Prospects and the Institute of Student Employers have published AI and Early Careers reporting that AI is already influencing early career choices.
Employment Trends
The REC/KPMG UK Report on Jobs showed that the April survey data pointed to a third consecutive monthly increase in permanent placements across the North of England. The respective seasonally adjusted index rose to its highest in almost four years, signalling a solid rise in appointments. Some recruiters noted an improvement in business confidence locally. However, in comparison recruiters based in the North of England signalled a sixth consecutive monthly fall in billings received from the employment of temporary staff in April. According to anecdotal evidence, the decline reflected firms’ decisions not to extend contracts and the completion of projects.
Latest data marked the third month in a row in which job vacancies have increased across the North of England. For both permanent and temporary roles, the rate of vacancy growth slowed from March, and was modest.
April data signalled a further increase in permanent staff availability across the North of England. Although panellists often linked the rise to more redundancies and challenging labour market conditions, there were also mentions of a greater willingness among candidates to seek out new roles. Amid reports of greater redundancies and fewer job opportunities, the availability of temporary staff increased again across the North of England in April, thereby stretching the current trend of growth that dates back to March 2023.
References
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/april2026
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/barriers-to-work-removed-for-disabled-benefit-claimants-as-landmark-legislation-introduced
https://www.england.nhs.uk/north-east-yorkshire/2026/03/26/first-wave-of-neighbourhood-health-centres-in-north-east-and-yorkshire/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/first-wave-of-national-young-futures-hubs-open-to-turn-the-tide-on-youth-services-decline
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tens-of-thousands-of-sick-and-disabled-people-nearer-to-work-with-government-support
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keep-britain-working-review-updates
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/equality-race-and-disability-bill-mandatory-ethnicity-and-disability-pay-gap-reporting/outcome/consultation-on-mandatory-ethnicity-and-disability-pay-gap-reporting-government-response
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/whistleblowing-guidance-for-employers
HSE launches consultation on workplace injury and illness reporting
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69d661c669de22b2bf86f651/making-work-pay-trade-union-right-of-access-government-response.pdf
https://kpmg.com/uk/en/media/press-releases/2026/05/kpmg-and-rec-uk-report-on-jobs.html
https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/complaints-and-concerns-data-sets/data-security-incident-trend
https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/complaints-and-concerns-data-sets/data-security-incident-trends/
https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/news/2026/03/half-of-smes-using-ai-with-limited-headcount-impact-so-far/
https://luminate.prospects.ac.uk/ai-and-early-careers