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The unemployment rate for January to March 2023 increased by 0.1 percentage points during the first quarter to 3.9% amid a surge in those not working due to ill health, according to the latest statistics from the Office For National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS also found that the UK employment rate was estimated at 75.9%, 0.2 percentage points higher than the previous quarter and 0.7 percentage points lower than before the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, the total actual weekly hours worked in the UK have been generally increasing since the relaxation of coronavirus lockdown measures. However, this was followed by a slight decrease from April to June 2022.
In the latest quarter, total actual weekly hours worked increased by 16.3 million hours to 1.05 billion hours in January to March 2023 (Figure 5). This is 0.2 million hours below pre-coronavirus pandemic levels (December 2019 to February 2020).
In addition, the latest figures show that from February to April 2023 the estimated number of vacancies fell by 55,000 over the quarter to 1,083,000. This is the 10th consecutive fall and demonstrates a “cautious approach to recruitment across all industries”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said since the pandemic there are now “well over 400,000 more people outside of the labour market due to ill health and that means we are now at a new record level of comfortably over two and a half million”.
