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.
Initial estimates also indicated that the number of payrolled employees slipped between April and June, with the steepest drop in the hospitality and retail sectors.
Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said the “latest figures point to a continued cooling of the labour market”.
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.