LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s unemployment rate unexpectedly fell again to 4.8% between January and March, a period which the country spent under a tight COVID lockdown, official figures showed on Tuesday.
Economists polled by Reuters had mostly expected the unemployment rate to hold at 4.9%.
Separate data for April showed a further improvement in the labour market with the number of employees on company payrolls in Britain jumping by 97,000 from March as companies adjusted to the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
That meant the drop in people on payrolls compared with February 2020, before the pandemic struck Britain, narrowed to 772,000, the Office for National Statistics said.
The data chimed with data suggesting a pick-up in hiring as Britain’s economy emerges from its third coronavirus lockdown on the back of swift progress with the country’s COVID vaccination programme.
(Reporting by William Schomberg and David Milliken)
