span>Tuesday/span>20th April 2021 - 09:37 (BST)
Figures released by the National Statistic office indicated UK unemployment has fallen for the second month in a row. The overall rate fell to 4.9% between December and February, outperforming the market consensus of a move higher to 5.1% as the nationwide lockdown continued to be enforced.
The number of unemployed people was down by 50,000 to 1.67 million, the first decrease since October to December 2019, while employment levels dropped by 73,000 to 32.43 million.
The number of employees on company payrolls fell by 56,000 between February and March, pushing up the total number of jobs lost since the coronavirus outbreak to 813,000.
The latest readings indicate a broadly stable jobs market but concerns remain that the government’s job furlough scheme is insulating it from the worst effects of the pandemic. Many analysts still expect unemployment to push 6% before the end of the year, but this would still be much better than the projections from when the crisis began.
GBP immediately moved higher following the news as risk appetite continues to flow back into the markets. The EU announced yesterday it had secured 600 million doses of the BioNTec / Pfizer vaccine, enough to cover two thirds of its population and to be delivered by the end of the year. This significantly improved the continents economic prospects and helped many European stock markets to push fresh highs.
