That was a 1.2% higher level than a year ago and 0.6% higher than in the previous quarter.

On the claimant count of people claiming unemployment benefits, unemployment hit 2.6 million in December.

In the three months to November, there was a sharp increase in unemployment while the employment rate continued to fall, the ONS said. 

During the period, 398,000 fewer people had jobs – the largest increase since December 2009, during the global financial crisis.

The proportion of the workforce on furlough increased to 16% during November but fell back to 11% by the end of December, possibly due to seasonal increases in work for the Christmas period.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has predicted unemployment will peak at 7.5% in the second quarter of this year.

James Reed, chairman of the Reed recruitment giant, said: “Today’s ONS statistics support the Chancellor’s November prediction that the economic emergency has only just begun.”

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He said, however, that Reed had seen a pick up in companies hiring recently. Last week it was up 4% on a year ago, with IT, telecoms, education and social care seeing some growth.

There was also good news from the ONS as it reported pay growth of an annual 3.6%, bouncing back from the 1.3% pay cuts seen in April to June.

Source – https://www.standard.co.uk/

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“I was very surprised,” El-Erian told “Fox News Sunday.” “This will go down in history as the biggest positive data shock for the markets and the economy.”

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“It’s some combination of an incredibly resilient economy bouncing back, the impact of government measures including the Paycheck Protection Program and finally, maybe some data distortion, so we can’t figure it out yet, but it certainly is good news,” he said.

Categorization issues may have led to the rate appearing lower than it actually is.

“There’s a category in there which says ‘staying at home for other reasons than unemployment,'” El-Erian said. “It’s supposed to capture jury duty. That category has become really big, and if you adjust for it that’s an additional three percentage points on the unemployment rate.”

May data also showed a slight 0.1 percent increase in black unemployment to 16.8 percent, highlighting a “problem of inequality of opportunity,” El-Erian said.

“The unemployment rate for blacks shot up much faster than it did for whites,” he said. “Last Friday’s data told us that while whites got a very sharp reduction in the unemployment rate, the rate for blacks went up. … It’s really important to focus on this.”

Source – https://www.foxbusiness.com/

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