Fact check: Employment rate and Labour’s asylum hotels record
Round-up of fact checks from the last few days compiled by Full Fact.
This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
How does the employment rate under Labour compare to the Conservative years?
In Parliament on Monday, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden twice made a claim comparing the current employment rate with that under the Conservatives.
He told a Conservative MP that “the employment rate in the UK is higher today than in all but one of the 14 years when his party was in power”, then in response to a different question moments later said “the employment rate in the UK today is higher than in every year but one of the Conservatives’ 14 years in power”.
This isn’t correct, according to official figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). They show that the UK’s employment rate was higher in two years during the Conservatives’ 14 years in government than it is currently. It was also at the same level as it is currently in a further three years, when rounded to one decimal place.
We contacted the Department for Work and Pensions about Mr McFadden’s comments, and did not receive a response. But his claim is not supported by the headline employment rate data published by the ONS.
The latest available estimate of the employment rate for 16-64 year olds, based on Labour Force Survey (LFS) data, is that it was 75.1% from May to July 2026. The same figure also applies to the most recent quarter (Q2 2026) and the most recent full calendar year (2025).
Between 2010 and 2024, the annual employment rate was higher than this twice. In 2018 it was 75.5%, and in 2019 it was 76.1%.
In 2020, 2022 and 2023, the employment rate was estimated to be 75.1% — the same level as it is currently — when rounded to one decimal place. The ONS told us it does not publish unrounded annual figures, so we don’t know whether the rate was slightly higher or lower in these years compared with currently.
It’s worth noting that LFS data was affected by lower than usual response rates after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ONS advises caution when assessing changes over time periods.
Minister wrong about Labour’s asylum hotels record
On Wednesday, Home Office minister Jo White claimed in Parliament that the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers “has fallen from 400 when we came into power to fewer than 160”.
This isn’t correct. The Home Office has previously said that the number of hotels in use peaked at “over 400 in summer 2023”, under the previous Conservative government, but it had fallen to 213 by the time Labour came to power in July 2024.
The Home Office said in August 2026 that fewer than 160 hotels remained in use.
Labour has said it will close all remaining hotels being used to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament. Full Fact is monitoring progress on this commitment as part of its Government Tracker.