Analysis: furlough has helped shelter Britons from unemployment, and businesses are hiring again
Trying to get to the bottom of what is happening to Britain’s labour market is a tricky business. There are three different measures for calculating unemployment, not all of which cover the same period.
Even so, some broad themes emerge from the latest blitz of data from the Office for National Statistics. One is that the furlough has done its job in shielding the economy from rising joblessness, with more than 4 million workers taking advantage of wage subsidies at the end of the first quarter.
