Redundancies surged to a record high of 370,000 in the third quarter of the year with young people hit hardest, official figures show.

Redundancies surged to a record high of 370,000 in the third quarter of the year with young people hit hardest, official figures show.
The number of UK workers on payrolls dropped slightly last month and has fallen by 819,000 between February and November due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Office for National Statistics said.
The unemployment rate edged up from to 4.9 per cent in August to October quarter from 4.8 per cent in the previous three-month period.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) director of economic statistics Darren Morgan said: “Overall we have seen a continuation of recent trends, with a further weakening in the labour market.
“The latest monthly tax numbers show over 800,000 fewer employees on the payroll in November than in February, with new analysis finding that over a third of this fall came from the hospitality sector.
“In the three months to October, employment was still falling sharply and unemployment was rising, but the number of people neither working nor looking for work was little changed.
“Average hours per worker were continuing to recover, though this was before the second lockdown in England.
“While there was another record rise in redundancies in the latest three months as a whole, they began to ease during October.”
The total number of weekly hours worked was 960.0 million, down 95.7 million hours on the same period the previous year but up a record 104.9 million hours compared with the previous quarter.