(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. jobs market strengthened for a sixth month in May as the economy took a further stride out of the coronavirus lockdown.The number of employees on payroll surged 197,000 from April, the biggest gain on record and vacancies climbed, Office for National Statistics figures published Tuesday show. In the three months through April, the jobless rate fell to 4.7%. The number of people in work rose by 113,000.The U.K. labor market is faring far better than had been feared, with government wage subsidies preserving the jobs of millions of workers idled during more than a year of restrictions that plunged the country into its deepest recession in three centuries.

The economy is now recovering strongly as those curbs are lifted. In April, non-essential stores welcomed back customers and restaurants and cinemas followed suit in May, leading to a surge in demand for staff.The question is how big a blow the labor market will suffer from a government decision to extend lockdown rules that it had planned to ease on June 21. On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that social-distancing rules will remain in place for an extra four weeks until July 19 due to a surge in cases of the highly transmissible Covid-19 variant first detected in India.That’s a setback for nightclubs, theaters, concert halls and sports stadiums that have been closed or operating under tight controls during the pandemic. Almost 3.5 million Britons remained on furlough as of the end of April.

The Bank of England expects unemployment to peak at 5.4%, implying that far fewer people than previously thought will lose their jobs when support for furloughed workers comes to end in September. That forecast was based on the economy fully reopening next week. The government yesterday pushed until the end of July the date when most Covid-19 restictions are due to lapse.

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