UK redundancies rise at fastest rate since 2009 amid Covid crisis

Almost 700,000 people, many of them young, have left company payrolls since March

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The number of redundancies in the UK has accelerated at the fastest pace since the financial crisis as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic triggers rising levels of unemployment.

Against a backdrop of mounting concern over a jobs crisis this autumn as the government's furlough scheme comes to an end, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 156,000 people were made redundant in the three months to July. This is an increase of 48,000 from the three months to the end of May, and the sharpest quarterly rise since 2009.