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Summary
- For the September quarter 2020, an estimated 1.6 million people were unemployed
- Office for National Statistics data shows that the UK’s redundancies climbed to 318,000 in the September quarter.
- Nearly 2.5 million people in the UK are still on the furlough scheme
The coronavirus has seriously hit the United Kingdom as the number of people out of work continues to rise. According to the latest data of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK’s unemployment rate in the three months to September was 4.8%, up 0.3%. The data shows that the country’s redundancies climbed to 318,000, whereas the Q2 numbers were 181,000 less than this. The rising cases of COVID-19 infection and frequent lockdowns across Britain have resulted in the massive dip.
Several companies laid off their employees, thinking that the furlough scheme would end in October. But the scheme was extended till March 2021 after the second lockdown was declared. Also, the number of jobless people increased by 243,000 in the three-month timeframe, which is the highest since May 2009. The maximum number of layoffs were in the 16 to 24 age bracket.
Deputy National Statistician at ONS Jonathan Athow told reporters that the firms are seeing a weak job market with fewer people on the payrolls and minimum people being employed. This has led to a rise in unemployment. But the vacancies continued to recover from the very low numbers seen earlier in the year.
The ONS data suggests that the UK is going through an extremely terrible phase, especially in terms of job creations. Now with the imposition of the second lockdown, it appears that the job market is further going to decline in the next quarter.
Around 2.5 million people are still on furlough and in the coming months, it could be difficult to predict whether the unemployment figures will see any recovery.
Tej Parikh, Chief Economist at the Institute of Directors, said the coronavirus pandemic is continuing to pose a threat to Britain's job market and that the extension of the furlough scheme has given the management room to plan their workforce, but it seems that the change has come too late for some people.
Also read: Should the UK Government Extend Furlough Scheme to Save Businesses?
Though people are hopeful after the clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech proved 90 per cent effective. But experts next quarter won’t see much change. Chief economist Jeremy Thomson-Cook of Equals Group said the numbers of redundancies in the last couple of months show that for many people the government job scheme support has come too late to save their jobs.
Moreover, the Bank of England (BOE) expects that nearly 5.5 million people will need support from the furlough scheme in November in the wake of the second national lockdown across Britain.
