UK Unemployment Surges 70% in April Due to Coronavirus

By Adedapo Adesanya

Unemployment in the United Kingdom rose nearly 70 percent to the highest level in almost 25 years as a total of 2.1 million people filed for benefits in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This means unemployment benefits in Britain soared to its highest level since 1996 in April, the first full month of the government’s coronavirus lockdown.

According to data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), 69.1 percent or 856,000 more people were unemployed.

The escalating number represents a record high for the UK economy since comparable records began in the early 1970s.

ONS said in a statement: “Unemployment measures people without a job who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks.”

The UK’s unemployment rate came in slightly higher at 3.9 percent in the January-March period, although that time period covered only one week of the lockdown (imposed in the U.K. from March 23).

The rate was up 0.1 percentage points from a year earlier and was 0.1 percentage points higher than in the last quarter of 2019.

Speaking on the result, Britain’s Minister for Work and Pensions, Ms Theresa Coffey, said the country can cope with the surge in unemployment from the COVID-19 pandemic and the government is working on how to get people back into jobs once the economy recovers.

Employment Minister, Mims Davies, said: “Clearly these figures are behind on our current struggle but the impact of this global health emergency is now starting to show – and we’re doing everything we can to protect jobs and livelihoods.

“What these statistics do highlight is that, heading into the pandemic, we had built strong foundations in our economy, which will be crucial as we gradually move forward as the lockdown eases and look to bounce back,” the Minister said.

Job vacancies also significantly decreased, with the number of empty posts in the three months to April diving by 170,000 to 637,000, compared to the previous quarter, the data said.