‘Woke’ Jaguar Land Rover joins UK jobs bloodbath just two months after Starmer boasted of ‘saving’ staff… as unemployment hits four-year high in wake of Labour’s huge tax raid
Jaguar Land Rover joined the UK jobs crunch today as firms struggle under US tariffs and Labour’s brutal tax raid.
The luxury car maker is axing up to 500 management roles, just two months after Keir Starmer unveil his much-vaunted trade deal with Donald Trump at the Solihull plant in May.
The move by JLR – which has been criticised over a ‘woke‘ Jaguar rebrand – came as it emerged the UK unemployment rate has hit a four-year high. It rose from 4.6 per cent in the three months to April to 4.7 per cent in the three months to May.
Meanwhile, numbers on company payrolls were down 25,000 in May and another 41,000 last month.
There 727,000 job vacancies between April to June, down 56,000 on the quarter. There have now been quarterly declines every month for the last three years.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures fuelled alarm at the weakening labour market, with warnings that firms are slashing hiring after ‘Awful April’ saw a massive rise in employer national insurance and the minimum wage.
The economy appears to be slowing at the same time, with GDP having fallen in two consecutive months, and inflation unexpectedly increased in June.
The Bank of England has said it is prepared to make larger interest rate cuts if it sees that the job market slowing.
JLR is axing up to 500 management roles, just two months after Keir Starmer unveil his much-vaunted trade deal with Donald Trump at the Solihull plant in May
Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers her Mansion House speech in London on Tuesday
ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: ‘The labour market continues to weaken, with the number of employees on payroll falling again, though revised tax data shows the decline in recent months is less pronounced than previously estimated.
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‘Pay growth fell again in both cash and real terms, but both measures remain relatively strong by historic standards.’
It comes as Ms Reeves prepares to pitch the UK as a ‘beacon of stability’ when she meets fellow finance ministers in South Africa.
The Chancellor is set to join her counterparts at the G20 in Durban today and tomorrow as the Government talks up a push for economic growth.
After growing 0.7 per cent in the first three months of 2025, the UK economy has since shrunk in the face of global and domestic challenges while inflation hit an 18-month high in June.
Meanwhile, global uncertainty persists with the threat of US tariffs and the ongoing impact of the war in Ukraine.
Tata-owned JLR said around 1.5 per cent of its UK workforce would be affected by the job cuts, which are going as part of a voluntary redundancy programme for managers in the UK.
A spokesman said: ‘As part of normal business practice, we regularly offer eligible employees the opportunity to leave JLR through limited voluntary redundancy programmes.’
It comes after JLR revealed last week that retail sales plunged 15.1 per cent in the three months to June after a temporary pause in exports to the US and the planned wind-down of older Jaguar models.
The company said the significant fall in sales was partly driven by the pause in shipments to the US in April after US President Donald Trump’s administration introduced new tariff plans.
In April, the US government said it would launch an additional 25 per cent tariff on car imports into the US, in an effort to encourage more car production within the country.
However, the US and UK have since agreed a deal which would see a lower 10 per cent tariff applied to the first 100,000 UK-manufactured cars imported into the US each year.
UK cars imported to the US beyond this threshold will however face a 27.5 per cent tariff.
JLR halted new shipments to the US in April but restarted exports in early May amid hopes that a trade deal for the sector would be struck.
The car firm saw wholesale sales in North America drop by 12.2 per cent year-on-year after the pause.
But wholesale sales in the UK were also heavily down – tumbling 25.5 per cent in the second quarter – after the planned wind-down of older Jaguar models.
Jaguar stopped selling new cars in the UK late last year as it shifts its production to new electric models, which are set to go on sale in 2026.
The rise in unemployment was worse than economists had expected, having predicted that the jobless rate would remain at 4.6 per cent for the month.
Average wage growth was slightly higher than the 4.9 per cent predicted by economists.
But the rate of wage increases was still the weakest since the three months to June 2022, and represents a drop from a revised level of 5.3 per cent in the three months to April.
Wage growth continues to outstrip inflation, reflecting a rise of 1.8 per cent after taking Consumer Prices Index inflation into account.
Government minister Jess Phillips admitted it would take a ‘long time’ to turn around the economy.
Put to her that ‘it doesn’t feel like things are going well’ following the release of the unemployment figures, she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘I agree.
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The Home Office minister told Sky News: ‘Fourteen years of totally stagnant growth is not something that changes overnight and that is why we have to have a steely focus on getting investment into Britain.’
She said the unemployment figures were ‘worrying’ but the Government was ‘fiercely seeking to create economic growth’.
‘Some of this stuff is going to take huge amounts of time when we’ve had decades of stagnant growth, but as a constituency MP, as a citizen of the UK, these things are always worrying,’ she said.
But she added: ‘There have been hundreds of thousands of new jobs created and wages have increased in the last 10 months quicker than they increased in the last 10 years.’
Suren Thiru, ICAEW Economics Director, said: ‘The UK labour market is looking increasingly fragile with rising unemployment and plummeting job vacancies pointing to more businesses slashing hiring activity as ‘awful April’s’ substantial spike in costs begin to bite.
‘Slowing wage growth suggests that skyrocketing employment costs and tougher economic conditions are a growing drag anchor on pay settlements, more than offsetting the upward pressure from April’s national minimum wage increase.’
