Jobs in the UK’s retail and hospitality sectors have declined at their fastest rate in recent history following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s October budget, which increased employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) by £25 billion.
According to analysis of HMRC payroll data by The Times, employment in supermarkets, pubs, bars, and hotels has contracted sharply since the announcement, reversing a decade-long trend of job creation in these sectors.
Retail alone saw 45,600 jobs lost in the nine months following the budget—compared to an average increase of 3,400 jobs over the same period in each of the previous ten years. In hospitality, pay-rolled employment shrank by 83,800, reversing what would normally have been a gain of nearly 31,000 jobs.
The findings suggest that the combination of higher employer NICs and the 6.7% minimum wage increase implemented in April has significantly raised the cost of employing entry-level and part-time staff—leading many businesses to reduce headcount.
Across the economy, payrolls have declined by 184,700 since October, with 70% of those job losses concentrated in retail and hospitality.
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