The UK labour market “weakened markedly” as coronavirus took hold, official figures have shown, with the number of employees on UK payrolls dropping around 650,000 from March to June.
A weakening jobs market led to a 0.3 per cent drop in total pay in May compared to a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. That is a 1.3 per cent drop when taking inflation into account.
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Nonetheless, the UK unemployment rate stayed at 3.9 per cent in the March to May period, the same as the previous three months, beating expectations. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it did not rise because although more people are out of work they are not currently looking for a job.
And the pace of the decline in the labour market slowed in June, with the bulk of the job losses in the earlier months of March to May. The figures do not take into account the slew of recent jobs losses at firms like Boots and HSBC.
Job vacancies in the April to June period were at their lowest level since similar records began in 2001, the ONS said. This shows the extent to which hiring has dried up during the coronavirus pandemic.
