THE jobs market has shown early signs of recovery as unemployment fell to 4.8% between January to March this year.
The fall came even though England was in its third national lockdown due to the Covid crisis.
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Official figures from the Office for National Statistics showed this was the largest quarterly decrease since September to November 2015.
The UK’s employment rate increased for the first time since December 2019 to February 2020 as well by 0.2%.
The ONS said this showed the early “signs of recovery” for the UK jobs market.
Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said: “The renewed lockdown at the beginning of 2021 saw a sharp rise in the number of previously unemployed people no longer looking for work, helping the unemployment rate to fall on the quarter.
“This mirrored what happened during the first lockdown.”
Separate figures for April also showed signs of the job market picking up, with the number of Brits on company payrolls jumping by 97,000 from March.
It came as companies adjusted to Covid restrictions easing under the first step of Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown.
It meant the drop in people on company payrolls before Covid struck the country in February 2020 narrowed to 772,000.
