Employee monthly pay in Northern Ireland climbed by 7% over the year to reach £2,258 a month on average, a report has said.
The latest labour market figures also reported a rise of 1% to 42,200 in the number of people receiving jobless benefits in NI during October.
The Department for the Economy, which released the figures, said the rise was down to a change in the earnings threshold for Universal Credit, introduced in May.
And statistics provided by HMRC from its PAYE system said there had been a 0.1% fall compared to the month before in the number of payrolled employees here in October, to reach 805,300. That figure was up 1.1% over the year.
And HMRC said its PAYE data also showed a median monthly pay of £2,258 in October, an increase of £5 or 0.2% over the month, and a rise of £148, or 7%, over the year.
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Quoting figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra), the department said the new claimant count of 42,200 amounted to 4.3% of the workforce, up 1.3% on September’s revised figure.
And Nisra said there had been 170 confirmed redundancies last month, while there were 2,010 over the year – which was 90% of the figure of 2,220 for the previous year.
There were 250 proposed redundancies last month, taking the annual total to 3,070, which was around three-quarters of the figure for the previous year of 4,110.
The separate labour force survey said the unemployment rate for July to September was 2%, unchanged over the quarter and down 0.3 percentage points over the year.
And the employment rate dropped slightly to 70.3% – while the economic inactivity rate rose by 1.2 percentage points over the quarter, and by 0.4 percentage points over the year, to reach 28.2%.
Mark McAllister, chief executive of the Labour Relations Agency in NI
Mark McAllister, chief executive of the Labour Relations Agency, said the jobs market was facing changes, including as a result of changes in the Budget. It had announced an increase in the minimum wage and in employer national insurance contributions.
He said: “The labour market is changing in some ways, but stubborn economic inactivity persists based on this morning’s figures.
“NI pay remains low compared to the rest of the UK even with changes pending under the National Minimum Wage and this combined with potential industrial strife in parts of the public sector here, such as the health service, make for grim assessments.”