UK employee numbers exceed pre-pandemic levels

London

BRITISH employers added a record 241,000 staff last month, lifting the total number of employees on company payrolls to just above the level before Britain first went into a Covid-19 lockdown last year, official data showed on Tuesday. The robust jobs data comes as Britain's government prepares to end its furlough programme on Sept 30, which helped around a third of employees at its peak, and last month was still supporting around 700,000 workers full time.

Tuesday's figures mark an upturn from July's weak economic data, when Britain's recovery slowed to a crawl as hundreds of thousands of workers had to stay home after being notified of contact with people who had tested positive for Covid-19.

Businesses reported more than one million vacancies in the three months to August - an all-time high, and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.6 per cent in the three months to July, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, in line with economists' expectations in a Reuters poll.

During the three months to July, the number of people in employment, which includes the self-employed as well as employees, rose by 183,000 to 32.4 million, broadly in line with forecasts.

The number of people in work on this broader measure was still well below the record 33.1 million just before the pandemic. Fewer people are self-employed and more report being unemployed or "inactive" - a category which includes many students, home-makers and those no longer looking for work.

Businesses reported 1.034 million vacancies in the three months to August, the highest since these records began in 2001. Vacancies were especially high in sectors such as accommodation and food services, which laid off many workers last year but have seen a boom in demand as Covid-19 restrictions eased in recent months. REUTERS