With lockdown being eased and the economy opening up, hiring should grow

In response to today’s Labour Market Statistics from the ONS, Neil Carberry, CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said:

“The headline figures may not show it, but a lot has changed since April –  with the Claimant count rising to 2.8 million, the unemployment rate is likely to be much higher than 3.9% now. But with the lockdown being eased and the economy opening up, hiring should grow.

“The scale of the growth in unemployment through the rest of the year will depend on consumer confidence and how employers react to the winding down of the furlough scheme. The good news is that the number of job adverts active in the UK has been slowly increasing, with more new job ads being posted every week.

“Helping jobseekers find new work quickly by matching them with available roles will help kick-start the economy. The recruitment industry is ready to help the government get people into work and keep unemployment down as much as possible.” 

The REC’s Jobs Recovery Tracker shows there were almost 963,000 job postings between 1-7 June, up from 950,000 in the week starting 11 May.

Continuing a bumper stats day, new Universal Credit data show new claims continuing to fall but still 20% above pre-crisis levels. Huge spike in late March, but still higher than before. Likely to be leading indicator of u/e. pic.twitter.com/omL10kO8as

— Stephen Evans (@Stephen_EvansUK) June 16, 2020

Estimates of employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other employment-related statistics for the UK.

Regional, local authority and Parliamentary constituency breakdowns of changes in UK employment, unemployment, economic inactivity and other related statistics.

The official measure of people employed in the UK public sector, including private sector estimates, based on the difference between total UK employment and public sector employment.