Steep rise in UK unemployment amid lockdown

There was a steep rise in the UK’s unemployment rate and a record number of redundancies from September to November 2020, new data reveals.

The country’s unemployment increased to 5 percent over the three months, representing an estimated 1.72 million people. That figure was 1.2 percent higher than a year earlier and 0.6 percent higher than the previous quarter, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics.

The redundancy rate reached a record high of 14.2 per thousand.

The number of people reporting redundancy in the three months prior to interview remained high in November, but dropped from the peak in September.