With unemployment at highest level in nearly four years, increased blame points to the Chancellor’s decision to raise National Insurance Contributions (NICs), which affected more than one million companies in Britain.

In addition to the heightened market uncertainties, higher borrowing costs, Inheritance tax revisions and increased National Living Wage, official figures indicate 276,000 jobs have been lost since the October budget. In May, we saw a reduction in the number of workers on company payrolls of 109,000 – the largest monthly fall since the same period in 2020 when the country was only just coming to terms with the onset of the global pandemic.

Date from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed Britain’s official unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in the three months to April – an increase from 4.5% in the previous three-month period and now the highest level since July 2021.