Unemployment has reached its highest level in more than four years, with 200,000 jobs lost in the three months to November.
The jobless rate climbed to 5 per cent for the three months to the end of November, up from 4.9 per cent in the three months to the end of October, according to the Office for National Statistics. An estimated 1.72 million people are out of work.
The period covers when England went into a second national lockdown. Although new restrictions took their toll on the labour market, economists had been expecting a sharper deterioration of 5.1 per cent.
More recent payroll data for last month suggests that employment picked up again after the November lockdown ended. There were 28.2 million payrolled employees, 52,000
