The revision, undertaken to ensure the data was aligned with recent population and geographical boundary estimates, had "virtually no effect" on employment estimates for the pandemic period of March to December 2020.
Tuesday's labour ministry reading of 3.89 million marked a 22% rise year on year, and excluded some 755,000 workers on a state-supported furlough scheme.
Joaquin Perez Rey, the secretary of state for employment, described the data as bad but also "full of anomalies".