Rising unemployment and stalled vacancies: Why workforce analytics must move beyond headcount

Across the globe, labour markets are losing momentum. According to an International Labour Organization (ILO) update, the 2025 employment forecast has been revised down by 7 million jobs, driven by geopolitical uncertainty and sluggish economic growth (ILO, 2025). Meanwhile, the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) suggests that economies are already showing early signs of cooling hiring activity, with projected employment growth slowing (OECD, 2025). At the same time, the UK is experiencing a nuanced slowdown: unemployment has risen to 5%, yet job vacancies remain broadly unchanged, a mismatch that hints at deeper structural issues (BBC, 2025).

In this complex global environment, traditional HR metrics like headcount and vacancy totals are no longer enough. To effectively manage risk and plan strategically, HR and Payroll leaders must adopt more advanced workforce analytics. This article explores what’s driving the global labour-market deceleration, why legacy metrics are becoming insufficient, and how deeper insights can support more agile and informed decision-making.

A cooling global labour market

Recent data from major global institutions confirms that labour-market momentum is slowing. The ILO, in its 2025 World Employment and Social Outlook, cut its job-creation forecast for 2025 from ~60 million to 53 million, effectively reducing expected global employment growth to roughly 1.5%, geopolitical tensions and trade disruptions are cited as key headwinds (ILO, 2025).

On the other hand, the OECD’s Employment Outlook 2025 points to demographic challenges adding pressure. Labour force participation remains high across its member states, but population ageing is set to severely constrain the working-age population in the long run. The OECD reports that annual employment growth in many OECD countries is projected to slow to 0.7% by 2026. Meanwhile, global economic forecasts have been downgraded due to policy uncertainty and trade risk (OECD, 2025).

This global deceleration isn’t necessarily simply a cyclical downturn, but could reflect structural shifts. For companies, that means uncertainty isn’t likely to be short-lived. Now, more than ever, workforce planning demands forward-looking analytics.

The UK as a microcosm of a global trend

The UK experience offers a sharp illustration of how global labour-market forces can play out locally. According to BBC coverage of official ONS (Office for National Statistics) data, unemployment in the UK rose to 5% for the three months to September 2025, a post-pandemic high. At the same time, there are approximately 723,000 job vacancies, a number that has increased by 2,000 between August to October (BBC, 2025).

The same BBC article highlighted several other dynamics shaping employer behaviour:

• Average wage growth slowed to 4.6%, down from the previous quarter.
• Payroll employment fell by an estimated 180,000 year-on-year.
• Private sector pay growth is easing as more people seek work, reducing workers’ bargaining power.

These figures raise important questions for employers: Why is unemployment rising if vacancies aren’t shrinking? Are organisations freezing recruitment even while roles remain open? Or could critical roles be going unfilled due to skills mismatches among job-seekers?

The limits of traditional workforce metrics

HR teams have long relied on familiar yardsticks to assess workforce health: headcount, vacancy numbers, turnover rates, and time-to-hire. But in today's slower, more tangled labour market, these metrics are becoming less effective.

For example, headcount might appear stable on the surface, but that stability can conceal serious risk, teams losing critical skills, overreliance on a few key individuals, or a mismatch between roles and actual talent.

What organisations need now are metrics that go deeper:

• Role-level vulnerability: which positions would pose the greatest risk to business continuity if vacated?
• Internal mobility: how effectively is the organisation redeploying existing talent, rather than defaulting to external recruitment?
• Cost-centre pressure: where and why are overtime, contractor rates, or pay variances spiking?
• Predictive signals: are there early indicators of attrition, critical role risk, or emerging skill gaps?

Traditional metrics	Advanced analytics
Headcount	Role vulnerability
Vacancy numbers	Skills gaps
Turnover	Internal mobility
Time-to-hire	Cost variance

How advanced workforce analytics can help navigate the slowdown

These insights require more than traditional HR reporting. They demand a unified, integrated analytics platform that connects HRIS, Payroll, and talent-acquisition systems, one that can translate raw data into forward-looking strategic intelligence. In the face of global labour-market headwinds, analytics is not a 'nice-to-have': it’s critical.

Use skills and mobility analytics

• Build dashboards to track internal redeployment, role changes, and emerging skill gaps.
• Use predictive modelling to identify roles at risk of becoming redundant, or where a redeployment opportunity exists.
• Enable HR to proactively re-skill high-value talent rather than simply posting new roles on the job market.

Monitor cost centres and Payroll variance

• Track cost anomalies: for example, rising overtime in certain teams, unbudgeted pay increases, or increased use of external/contract labour.
• Deploy alerting mechanisms: for instance, if a department’s pay cost deviates significantly from forecast, trigger a review.
• Enable Finance and HR teams to collaborate, bringing more visibility and control.

Predictive workforce signals

• Combine internal data (turnover, redeployment, skills) with external macro-labour market indicators (global unemployment, OECD forecasts) to identify risk triggers.
• Use 'what-if' modelling to simulate different scenarios, for example, if hiring stays frozen or if a portion of roles are redeployed.

Ensure data quality and compliance

• In times of uncertainty, data integrity becomes more critical than ever. Analytics need to be built on clean, accurate, auditable data.
• Use sandboxed environments to safely test workforce changes without disrupting live HR/Payroll operations.
• Build monitoring around data completeness (e.g. missing skills information) so decisions are made on solid foundations.

Turn uncertainty into strategic advantage with EPI-USE Labs

As labour-market signals become harder to interpret, HR and Payroll teams increasingly need access to timely, consolidated, and reliable workforce data. Many organisations still rely on disconnected systems or manual reporting, which makes it difficult to understand emerging risks or see trends across the employee lifecycle.

Tools like EPI-USE Labs' Query Manager help close this gap by giving HR and Payroll teams the ability to bring key data sources together and explore them more flexibly. Instead of waiting for static reports or navigating multiple systems, teams can build customised queries, audit data quality, and surface insights that highlight areas such as overtime pressure, turnover patterns, or skills bottlenecks. This creates a clearer picture of how workforce dynamics are shifting, even in uncertain economic conditions.

Paired with scenario-based analytics, organisations can model potential changes (such as hiring slowdowns or role restructures) to understand how these might affect capability, cost, or compliance. This doesn’t replace strategic decision-making, but it provides the evidence needed to make those decisions with confidence.

By improving visibility, strengthening data accuracy, and enabling more adaptable reporting, EPI-USE Labs’ solutions support HR and Payroll teams in staying ahead of labour-market uncertainty. The result is a more informed, resilient approach to workforce planning, one grounded in insight rather than intuition.

In summary: get deeper workforce analytics

We are navigating a global labour-market slowdown, driven by geopolitical risk, demographic shifts, and macroeconomic uncertainty. Traditional metrics such as headcount, vacancy totals and turnover are proving inadequate in this new reality. The UK’s rise to 5% unemployment, even as its vacancy numbers remain steady, is a powerful example of this disconnect (BBC, 2025).

What HR leaders need now is a deeper, more integrated form of workforce analytics, one that blends internal data and external signals, embeds predictive modelling and scenario planning, and elevates decision-making. EPI-USE Labs is uniquely positioned to enable that transformation, helping organisations build a future-ready, resilient workforce.

Sources

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2025, May 28). “Global employment forecast downgraded by up to 7 million jobs in 2025 amid rising uncertainty”.

BBC News (2025, November 11). “UK unemployment rate rises to 5% as jobs market weakens”.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2025, July 9). “OECD Employment Outlook 2025”