London and Yorkshire lead the way in private sector employment growth
Private sector employment in the capital was up 1.7 percentage points in the second quarter of this year (April – June) – taking it to 61.3 per cent. This underpinned an increase for the Greater South East of 1.4 percentage points, to 62.2 per cent.
The private sector employment indicator for England was at its highest since the second quarter of 2009, at an estimated 59.1 per cent – an increase of 0.7 percentage points.
London was trumped only by Yorkshire and the Humber, which saw an increase of 2.0 percentage points to 56.7 per cent.
Around 11.2m people were employed in the Greater South East in the period, of which the private sector employed 9.3m – an increase of 0.3m on the same period the previous year.
Across the rest of the country, the number of private sector employees remained virtually unchanged, with the indicator at 56.7 per cent – an increase of just 0.1 percentage points.
In the second quarter, GDP was estimated to have expanded by 0.7 per cent compared to the first quarter.
