The UK Minister for Work and Pensions Theresa Coffey said that the country could cope with the surge in unemployment brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
"In the meantime the department is also working across the government on what we can do to help people get back into the labour market once the economy properly recovers," she told BBC TV.
The UK employment rate in the first 3 months of 2020 was estimated at a joint-record high of 76.6%, 0.6 percentage points higher than a year earlier and 0.2 percentage points up on the previous quarter.
There were an estimated 637,000 vacancies in the UK in February to April 2020 which is 170,000 fewer than the previous quarter and 210,000 fewer than a year earlier.
Earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his gratitude to the UK population for their continued efforts to adhere to social distancing guidelines. London Mayor Sadiq Khan also called on the capital’s inhabitants to avoid all unnecessary travel on public transport in order to prevent a second wave of the outbreak.
Since the start of the outbreak, 243,699 positive tests for COVID-19 have been reported in the United Kingdom.
