More unemployment next year than in pandemic, experts predict, as inflation set to top 13 percent this year

A small rise in the proportion of unemployed people in the UK could be a sign of worse things yet to come, economists have warned.

Official data released today (August 16) showed the UK’s unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 3.8 percent from April to June.

However, one expert believes that the figures could hit 5.3 percent - higher than the worst days of the pandemic. After the data was released, Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said unemployment is set to rise sooner than forecasted by experts at the Bank of England (BoE).

Mr Tombs said that demand for workers is starting to stabilise, just as more people are coming into the jobs market. READ MORE: A forgotten child in the Greater Manchester flats that are full of fear “The unemployment rate is no longer falling and the timeliest indicators suggest that it will start to rise far sooner than the BoE anticipates,” he said. “Labour demand is stabilising just as labour supply is picking up.” He said that 195,000 people entered the jobs market in the three months to June, an increase of 0.6 percent - which is three times higher than the average over the 2010s.