Unemployment Drops To 4.3% As Businesses Take On More Workers After Furlough Ends
In October, UK employers added 160,000 people to their payrolls as the jobs market confounded fears that a steep rise in unemployment would follow the end of the government’s furlough scheme.
According to the Office for National Statistics, this extra boost in UK employees brought the total figure up to 29.3 million in October.
Between July and September, the official unemployment rate, which includes data from before the end of the furlough scheme, dropped by 4.3%, down 0.5 percentage points when compared with April to June. It currently remains 0.3 points above levels seen pre-pandemic.
On a quarterly basis, a record number of people in the UK have gone from being unemployed to having a job, a shift that underlines the success of the government’s furlough scheme. While the figures represent good news for workers, they add to the difficulties of employers who are struggling to recruit workers amid an ongoing labour shortage.
Compared with other G7 nations, the UK economy remains sluggish. The US economy has already excelled to its pre-pandemic level despite taking a hard knock from coronavirus. The US’s recovery has been attributed, in part, to a $1.9 trillion government spending programme to stimulate the economy.
