UK unemployment rate jumps to 5.1% amid Covid crisis

Highest level since early 2016

The UK unemployment rate rose to 5.1% in the three months to December, reaching the highest level in five years.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), 1.74 million people were unemployed in the October to December period, up 454,000 from the same quarter in 2019. The last time the unemployment rate was above 5% was in the autumn of 2015. However, Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician at the ONS, said that the true underlying picture was not yet clear due to the high number of people still on furlough. "We're not seeing the underlying picture here because there's an awful lot of people furloughed — when we talk about a few hundred thousand people still on the payroll, we...