UK unemployment falls again under government’s jobs shield

UK unemployment falls again under government’s jobs shield

Britain's unemployment rate unexpectedly fell for a second month in a row to 4.9 percent in the December-to-February period, most of which the country spent under a tight COVID-19 lockdown, official figures showed on Tuesday.

Economists polled by Reuters had largely forecast that the jobless rate - which has been held down by the government's huge jobs subsidies programme - would edge up to 5.1 percent from 5.0 percent in the three months to January.

The ONS linked the fall to a large volume of men leaving the jobs market altogether. The so-called inactivity rate rose by 0.2 percentage points in the three months to February, echoing a rise during the first lockdown of last year.

There was another reminder of the precarious state of the labour market in figures from Britain's tax office which showed the number of employees on company payrolls fell by 56,000 between February and March, the first decline in four months.

That pushed up the total number of jobs lost since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic to 813,000 - more than half of which were held by people aged under 25, with hospitality-heavy London the hardest-hit region, the ONS said.

"If we don't act quickly, in particular by focusing