The UK unemployment rate rose another 0.2 percentage points in the latest quarter, latest figures show.

The rate rose to 4.1 per cent between May and July, according to Office for National Statistics data, 0.3 percentage points higher than the 3.8 per cent reported a year earlier.

While the furlough scheme was still in effect during the time the data was collected, the preliminary numbers show some cause for concern going forward.

In August, payrolls shrank by 695,000 as workforces were cut before the Job Retention Scheme finished.

While redundancies were still historically low, both the quarterly and annual changes are the largest seen since 2009, the ONS notes.

The biggest fall in employment fell on 16-24 year-olds, it says.

Part time work is still prevalent, the statistics suggest, as total weekly hours worked dropped 183.8 million from the previous quarter.

While the number of people who are estimated to be temporarily away from work, including furloughed workers, dipped slightly, it was still more than 5 million in July 2020.

However, one of the positives to be drawn from the latest data was that the number of vacancies available did rebound from record lows in the previous quarter.