Public debate surrounding the impact of lockdown on employment has focussed – where it has taken place at all – on the impact on younger people. Despite this, new data shows that older workers have suffered the highest rate of redundancy over the past year. The Financial Times has the story.
U.K. workers aged over 50 have suffered the highest rate of redundancy of any age group in the latest quarter, and the biggest increase since the start of the pandemic, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS said that, while young people had borne the brunt of the first wave of job losses, and had been hardest hit overall, redundancy rates had also declined earliest for this age group.
In the period from December to February, the redundancy rate for over-50s was highest at 9.7 per 1,000, up from 4.3 per 1,000 a year earlier.
Over the course of the pandemic, older men had been most likely to lose jobs in manufacturing, while around a third of redundancies among older women were in distribution, hotels and restaurants.
Employees aged 50 and over were also more likely to be working reduced hours in the December-to-February period, with the proportion receiving partial or no pay increasing with age.
Kate Andrews, writing in the Spectator, notes that the job landscape will only get worse as the furlough scheme comes to an end.
It’s inevitable that some people will emerge from furlough to discover their jobs no longer exist. Even if Covid restrictions are fully lifted and society is able to return to pre-pandemic normalcy, substantial shifts in the way we work, shop and live have taken place over the past year – some of which are bound to stay. The concern for older workers, the ONS notes, is that redundancy might mean the end of their time in the workforce altogether. Unlike their younger counterparts, who will suffer setbacks of their own, the pandemic will not have delayed their career progression, but ended it, as some opt for early retirement instead of re-skilling and re-training, or hunting for the next job.
This will pose a series of challenges: to individuals who don’t feel entirely secure in their retirement, to the U.K.’s labour market recovery, and to the public finances as well. Forget the past year’s off-the-chart spending: even before Covid, Britain’s spending pledges were already out of kilter with what it could realistically afford long-term. Pre-pandemic, the Office for Budget Responsibility was projecting that public sector net debt as a proportion of GDP would rise to 283% over the next 50 years: as the country works to make good on significant healthcare and pension pledges, the cost will be shouldered by people in work.
A spike in workers entering early retirement will only accelerate this trend, and increase the burden on the working-age population to cover increasing costs.
The FT report is worth reading in full.
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Just as intended, I suspect.
Maybe, but unintended consequences seem to be the main thrust of ‘government’ ‘policy’.
Admittedly, the Great Reset looks more plausible by the day, in which case government competence is higher than, sometimes at least, seems likely!
I say it again, this risks bankrupting the country – and things weren’t looking great pre-covid.
Looks like it’ll be hard for them to withdraw from the furlough scheme if they know that there will be mass unemployment. People talk about an exit strategy from restrictions, but this is very serious too, and a huge extra cost which risks continuing for years, same as quantitative easing. And with mass poverty will come wars, political instability, and accompanying deaths to make any supposed saving of life from lockdowns look tiny. Pantsdown and the rest have a lot to answer for with their ludicrous scare-mongering focused on just one disease.
You can’t bankrupt the country. It’s a systemic impossibility – because the ‘deficit’ is just people saving overall. In a country with its own currency it all just goes around in a big circle. We can no more run out of money than a hot tub can run out of water because you’ve turned the pump on.
We can run the furlough scheme forever if we want to. It’s just a way of leaving the pump on.
Yet who will pay for the pump?
Can a country ever be in debt to itself when it can (theoretically) print any debt out of existence ??
Universal. Basic. Income.
It was trialed somewhere wasn’t it? And not very successfully. Must be jolly expensive.
I suspect it’s less about expense and more about control.
Oh yes, of course. The aging population, twitter revolutions – they need to keep a lid on it, they know there’s trouble down the road and are trying to head it off. China certainly know, and China have done most to push these lockdowns (most studies supporting the asymptomatic myth originated in China didn’t they?). Could still backfire though, same as their one child tyranny which landed them in this mess.
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“Britain’s spending pledges were already out of kilter with what it could realistically afford long-term.”
Another belief stated as fact – despite the evidence of the last year and the last ten years of QE. And yet the same people will complain about mask fanatics not listening to the facts.
The UK can afford whatever is available for sale in Sterling. Today, tomorrow and forever.
If we hire all the out of work 50+ year olds to work for the council and pay them, then their spending will “crowd in” production to service them and everybody will be better off.
That new production may then hire some of those people back to service the new demand – causing the spending to back off automatically.
The furlough scheme is going to have to evolve into full employment at a fixed living wage if we’re not to end up in a recession.
I think you need to read up on your Bastiat.
Furlough is smashing the windows of savers.
You will have nothing and will be happy
Notice the “you”
and not “we”
language matters
Neo Liberals don’t care about workers
They are comfy working from home doing as little as possible whilst professing to be left wing
Going to be fun when 3rd world steals all their jobs
“You will own nothing and be happy”. Jesus H. Fu*king Christ!!