THE number of Brits without a job hit 1.7million in January with 11,000 more losing work as the UK endured its third national lockdown.
While the number of workers on payrolls increased for the third month in a row, up 68,000 between January and February.
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Overall, the unemployment rate was at 5%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), slightly lower than the 5.2% economists had expected.
A year on since the start of the first lockdown, an extra 693,000 workers are out of a job due to the impact of the pandemic.
The total unemployment figure is up 360,000 on the same period – between November and January – last year, before the coronavirus crisis hit the economy.
Overall, the rate is 1.1% higher than the previous year.
Hardest hit sectors are still under pressure
More than half the jobs lost have been lost in the UK’s hospitality sector as lockdown restrictions continue to hammer the industry.
The ONS added that 123,000 payroll jobs were also lost in the hard-hit retail sector while more than 60% of the total fall over the past year was for those aged under 25 in a sign of the toll taken by the crisis on young workers.
Sam Beckett, ONS head of economic statistics, said: “After yet another monthly increase, there were almost 200,000 more employees on payroll in February than three months earlier, although that is still nearly 700,000 down from the start of the pandemic.
“Of the decrease since then, almost two-thirds has been among the under-25s, over half has been in hospitality and almost a third has been in London.”
For men, the unemployment rate hit 5.2%, while for women it reached 4.7%, both up 1.1% on 2020.
What are my redundancy rights?
BEFORE making you unemployed, your employer should still carry out a fair redundancy process.
You are entitled to be consulted on the redundancy lay-off first and to receive a statutory redundancy payment, as long as you’ve been working somewhere for at least two years.
How much you’re entitled to depends on your age and length of service, although this is capped at 20 years. You’ll get:
- Half a week’s pay for each full year you were under 22,
- One week’s pay for each full year you were 22 or older, but under 41,
- One and half week’s pay for each full year you were 41 or older.
Sadly, you won’t be entitled to a payout if you’ve been working for your employer for fewer than two years.
There should be a period of collective consultation as well as time for individual ones if your employer wants to make 20 or more employees redundant within 90 days or each other.
You are also entitled to appeal the decision by claiming unfair dismissal within three months of being let go.
The ONS also estimated in the three months to January 2021, 11 employees in 1,000 were made redundant.
During the three months the data represents, parts of England were shut down under the Tier system, while others were placed under tough restrictions.
Scotland and Wales were also under their own national lockdown rules to stop the spread of a infectious new variant of Covid-19.
By January, all three nations were in a full lockdown, with businesses including pubs, restaurants and non-essential retail told to temporarily close.
The government’s furlough scheme, which has now been extended until the end of September, has also managed to keep 4.7million workers on the books.
The figures show a slight improvement since the start of the pandemic, with 601,000 vacancies between December and February.
This is 26.8% lower than a year earlier but the decline has eased steadily from a near-60% drop last summer, though the ONS said the rate of improvement has slowed in recent months.
Official figures earlier this month showed the economy contracted by 2.9% in January as the lockdown took its toll, but this was less than feared and a far cry from the double-digit fall of last April at the height of the first wave.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) recently revised down its forecasts for unemployment to peak at 6.5% by the end of the year – down from previous estimates made in November of 7.5%.
This will mean 340,000 fewer people out of work than previously thought thanks largely to the decision to extend furlough until September.
Unemployment still expected to rise
“We still expect the unemployment rate to rise further to a peak of 6% by early 2022,” wanred Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics research group.
“But that would be a much better result than most feared only a few months ago.”
Reed recruitment said that it is already seeing job opportunities emerging in sectors hit hardest by the pandemic.
So far, its seen a 38% increase in the number of jobs being advertised in the leisure and tourism sector and nearly 2,000 jobs for hospitality jobs in the first two weeks of March.
James Reed, from Reed recruitment, said that a “huge amount of work to be done to galvanise the economy” but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t started to recover.
He said: “The economy has been supported through this crisis by substantial government intervention and by the UK’s incredible entrepreneurial spirit.
“A testament to the efforts and resilience of businesses over the last twelve months is that we are now starting to see job opportunities emerge in sectors previously decimated by the pandemic.”
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Around half of UK workers have suffered pay cuts in real terms due to the coronavirus crisis, according to research.
But promisingly, millions of young workers will get a pay rise of £345 from April, as the National Living Wage increases.
The national living wage is different to the real living wage, which is a voluntary amount that companies choose to pay their workers.
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