LONDON: Britain’s unemployment rate hit its highest in nearly five years in the three months to November, when coronavirus cases began to rise for a second time and most of the country returned to a partial lockdown.

Redundancies touched a record high, taking the unemployment rate to 5.0%, its highest since mid-2016, according to official data, although the increase was slightly weaker than economists’ forecasts.

There were some signs of a limited recovery in December, when lockdown measures eased, although a deterioration is likely in early 2021 as a tougher lockdown shut schools and closed most non-essential businesses to the public.

Tax data for December showed a 52,000 increase in the number of staff on company payrolls from November, but there were 828,000 fewer workers on payrolls than in February.

Economists said the data showed the jobs market was holding up better than many forecasters had feared.

Unemployment has been kept down by the government’s Job Retention Scheme, which supported 2.4 million jobs as of Oct. 31, down from a peak of 8.9 million in May.

The programme is Britain’s most expensive COVID-19 economic support measure, costing 46.4 billion pounds ($63 billion) up to mid-December, and is due to end on April 30.

The number of people in employment dropped 88,000 in the three months to the end of November, the smallest fall since the start of the pandemic and less than the 100,000 drop forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.