Britain’s unemployment rate has jumped to 4.5 percent as the coronavirus pandemic continues to destroy jobs, official data showed on Tuesday.
The reading for the June-August period compared with an unemployment rate of 4.1 percent for May to July, the Office for National Statistic said in a statement.
Early estimates for September meanwhile “suggest that there is little change in the number of payroll employees in the UK; up 20,000 compared with August”, the ONS said.
Since the start of the UK pandemic in March, the number of payroll employees has dived by a net 673,000.
“The latest batch of data show that the labour market has been somewhat weaker than previously thought and that the fallout from the Covid-19 recession is intensifying,” noted Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics research group.
