In March 2020, the UK government introduced a Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Businesses that had to close or cut back could put staff on furlough and the scheme would allow employers to claim 80% of workers’ wages up to £2500 per month. This would be passed on to workers.
There was large-scale uptake of the scheme. By the end of August, 9.6 million employees were on furlough (28% of the workforce) from around 1.2 million employers (61% of eligible employers). The scheme significantly stemmed the rise in unemployment. The claimant count rose 121% from March to August from 1.24 million to 2.74 million, far less than it would have done without the furlough scheme.
Since 1 August the level of support has been reduced in stages and is due to end on 31 October. It will then be replaced by a new ‘Job Support Scheme (JSS)‘ running from 1 November 2020 to 30 April 2021. Initially, employees must work at least 33% of their usual hours. For hours not worked, the government and the employer will pay a third each. There would be no pay for the final third. This means that an employee would receive at least 77.7% (33% + (2/3)67%) of their full pay – not far short of the 80% under the furlough scheme.
Effects on unemployment
Will the scheme see a substantial rise in unemployment, or will it be enough to support a gradual recovery in the economy as more businesses are able to reopen or take on more staff?
On first sight, it might seem that the scheme will give only slightly less job protection than the job furlough scheme with employees receiving only a little less than before. But, unlike the previous scheme, employers will have to pay not only for work done, but also an additional one-third for work not done. This is likely to encourage employers to lay off part of their staff and employ the remainder for more than one-third of their usual hours. Other firms may simply not engage with the scheme.
What is more, the furlough scheme paid wages for those previously employed by firms that were now closed. Under the new scheme, employees of firms that are forced to stay closed, such as many in the entertainments industry, will receive nothing. They will lose their jobs (at least until such firms are able to reopen) and will thus probably have to look for a new job. The scheme does not support them.
The government acknowledges that some people will lose their jobs but argues that it should not support jobs that are no longer viable. The question here is whether some jobs will eventually become viable again when the Covid restrictions are lifted.
With Covid cases on the rise again and more restrictions being imposed, especially at a local level, it seems inevitable that unemployment will continue to rise for some time with the ending of the furlough scheme and as the demand for labour remains subdued. The ending of the new scheme in April could compound the problem. Even when unemployment does begin to fall, it may take many months to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Update: expansion of the scheme
On 9 October, with Covid-19 cases rising rapidly in some parts of the country and tighter restrictions being imposed, the government announced that it was extending the scheme. From 1 November, employees of firms in certain parts of the country that would be required to close by the government, such as bars and restaurants, would be paid two-thirds of their previous wages by the government.
Critics of this extension to the scheme argue many firms will still be forced to shut because of lack of demand, even though they are not legally being required close. Employees of such firms will receive nothing from the scheme and will be forced onto Universal Credit. Also, the scheme will mean that many of the workers who do receive the money from the government will still face considerable hardship. Many will previously have been on minimum wages and thus will struggle to manage on only two-thirds of their previous wages.
Articles
- Job Support Scheme: What will I be paid after furlough?
BBC News, Eleanor Lawrie (1/10/20)
- Chancellor unveils new Job Support Scheme and extends self-employed grant
MSE News, Callum Mason (24/9/20)
- Sunak has bought himself time, but his big test will come as crisis eases
IFS Newspaper article, Paul Johnson (28/9/20)
The businesses that feel left behind by Sunak’s jobs support schemeChannel 4 News, Paul McNamara (25/9/20
- Covid: Jobs scheme ‘won’t stop major rise in unemployment’
BBC News (25/9/20)
- How the new Job Support Scheme will work
FT Adviser, Richard Churchill (30/9/20)
- Covid scheme: UK government to cover 22% of worker pay for six months
The Guardian, Phillip Inman (24/9/20)
- Hard winter ahead as Sunak tries to stop job losses hitting postwar record
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (24/9/20)
- Job Support Scheme ‘won’t reduce job losses’
Personnel Today, Ashleigh Webber (25/9/20)
- Sunak’s new job support scheme offers warm words but no escape from the coming unemployment chill
The Conversation, David Spencer (24/9/20)
Articles: update
Government information
Questions
- If people on furlough were counted as unemployed, find out what would have happened to the unemployment rate between March and August 2020.
- If an employer were previously employing two people doing the same type of job and now has enough work for only one person, under the Job Support Scheme would it be in the employers’ financial interest to employ one worker full time and make the other redundant or employ both of the workers half time? Explain your arguments.
- What are the arguments for and against the government supporting jobs for more than a few months?
- What determines the mobility of labour? What policies could the government pursue to increase labour mobility?
- Find out what policies to support employment or wages have been pursued by two other countries since the start of the pandemic. Compare them with the policies of the UK government.
The LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance has just published a paper looking at the joint impact of Covid-19 and Brexit on the UK economy. Apart from the short-term shocks, both will have a long-term dampening effect on the UK economy. But they will largely affect different sectors.
Covid-19 has affected, and will continue to affect, direct consumer-facing industries, such as shops, the hospitality and leisure industries, public transport and personal services. Brexit will tend to hit those industries most directly involved in trade with Europe, the UK’s biggest trading partner. These industries include manufacturing, financial services, posts and telecommunications, mining and quarrying, and agriculture and fishing.
Despite the fact that largely different sectors will be hit by these two events, the total effect may be greater than from each individually. One of the main reasons for this is the dampening impact of Covid-19 on globalisation. 
Travel restrictions are likely to remain tighter to more distant countries. And countries are likely to focus on trading within continents or regions rather than the whole world. For the UK, this, other things being equal, would mean an expansion of trade with the EU relative to the rest of the world. But, unless there is a comprehensive free-trade deal with the EU, the UK would not be set to take full advantage of this trend.
Another problem is that the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have weakened the economy’s ability to cope with further shocks, such as those from Brexit. Depending on the nature (or absence) of a trade deal, Brexit will impose higher burdens on trading companies, including meeting divergent standards and higher administrative costs from greater form filling, inspections and customs delays.
Papers
Articles
Questions
- Referring to the LSE paper, give some examples of industries that are likely to be particularly hard hit by Brexit when the transition period ends? Explain why.
- Why have university finances been particularly badly affected by both Covid-19 and Brexit? Are there any other sectors that have suffered (or will suffer) badly from both events?
- Is there a scenario where globalisation in trade could start to grow again?
- Has Covid-19 affected countries’ comparative advantage in particular products traded with particular countries and, if so, how?
- The authors of the LSE report argue that ‘government policies to stimulate demand, support workers to remain in employment or find new employment, and to support businesses remain essential’. How realistic is it to expect the government to provide additional support to businesses and workers to deal with the shock of Brexit?
Boris Johnson gave a speech on 30 June outlining his government’s approach to recovery from the sharpest recession on record. With the slogan ‘Build, build, build’, he said that infrastructure projects were the key to stimulating the economy. Infrastructure spending is a classic Keynesian response to recession as it stimulates aggregate demand allowing slack to be taken up, while also boosting aggregate supply, thereby allowing recovery in output while increasing potential national income.
A new ‘New deal’
He likened his approach to that of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. This was a huge stimulus between 1933 and 1939 in an attempt to lift the US economy out of the Great Depression. There was a massive programme of government spending on construction projects, such as hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and dams, including the Hoover Dam and completing the 113-mile Overseas Highway connecting mainland Florida to the Florida Keys. Altogether, there were 34 599 projects, many large-scale. In addition, support was provided for people on low incomes, the unemployed, the elderly and farmers. Money supply was expanded, made possible by leaving the Gold Standard in 1934.
There was some debate as to whether the New Deal could be classed as ‘Keynesian’. Officially, the administration was concerned to achieve a balanced budget. However, it had a separate ’emergency budget’, from which New Deal spending was financed. According to estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, the total extra spending amounted to nearly 40% of US GDP as it was in 1929.
By comparison with the New Deal, the proposals of the Johnson government are extremely modest. Mostly it amounts to bringing forward spending already committed. The total of £5 billion is just 0.2% of current UK GDP.
Focusing on jobs
A recent report published by the Resolution Foundation, titled ‘The Full Monty‘, argues that as the Job Retention Scheme, under which people have been furloughed on 80% pay, is withdrawn, so unemployment is set to rise dramatically. The claimant count has already risen from 1.2m to 2.8m between March and May with the furlough scheme in place.
Policy should thus focus on job creation, especially in those sectors likely to experience the largest rise in unemployment. Such sectors include non-food retail, hospitality (pubs, restaurants, hotels, etc.), public transport, the arts, entertainment and leisure and a range of industries servicing these sectors. What is more, many of the people working in these sectors are young and low paid. Many will find it difficult to move to jobs elsewhere – partly because of a lack of qualifications and partly because of a lack of alternative jobs. The rising unemployment will raise inequality.
The Resolution Foundation report argues that policy should be focused specifically on job creation.
Policy makers should act now to minimise outflows from the hard-hit sectors – a wage subsidy scheme or a National Insurance cut in those sectors would reduce labour costs and discourage redundancies. Alongside this, the Government must pursue radical action to create jobs across the country, such as in social care and housing retrofitting, and ramp up support for the unemployed.
Dealing with hyteresis
The economy is set to recover somewhat as the lockdown is eased, but it is not expected to return to the situation before the pandemic. Many jobs will be lost permanently unless government support continues.
Even then, many firms will have closed and others will have reassessed how many workers they need to employ and whether less labour-intensive methods would be more profitable. They may take the opportunity to consider whether technology, such as AI, can replace labour; or they may prefer to employ cheap telecommuters from India or the Philippines rather than workers coming into the office.
Policies to stimulate recovery will need to take these hysteresis effects into account if unemployment is to fall back to pre-Covid rates.
Videos
Articles
- Coronavirus: Boris Johnson pledges ‘new deal’ to build post-virus
BBC News (30/6/20)
- Boris Johnson hails his economic plan as a new ‘New Deal.’ Try ‘small deal’ instead
MarketWatch, Pierre Briançon (30/6/20)
- Boris Johnson announces state-led post-coronavirus relaunch
Financial Times, George Parker, Jim Pickard and Chris Giles (30/6/20)
- How does Boris Johnson’s ‘new deal’ compare with Franklin D Roosevelt’s?
The Guardian, Richard Partington (30/6/20)
- Coronavirus: Ministers urged to stave off ‘second wave’ of unemployment with major job creation plan
PoliticsHome, Matt Honeycombe-Foster (29/6/20)
- Biggest job creation package in peacetime needed to deflect increase in UK unemployment, think tank reports
Independent, Alan Jones (29/6/20)
- UK needs ‘biggest-ever peacetime job creation plan’ to stop mass unemployment
The Guardian, Richard Partington (29/6/20)
- The International Labour Organization was founded after the Spanish flu – its past lights the path to a better future of work
The Conversation, Huw Thomas, Frederick Harry Pitts and Peter Turnbull (17/6/20)
- Seven charts on the coronavirus jobs market
BBC News, By Lora Jones and Daniele Palumbo (16/6/20)
- Covid, hysteresis, and the future of work
Vox, Richard Baldwin (29/5/20)
- The economy won’t snap back after Covid-19
Financial Times, Tim Harford (5/6/20)
- Addressing The Covid-19 Shock -Keeping People In Work And Businesses Afloat
Forbes, Linda Yueh (20/3/20)
- Cutting labour taxes brings back the jobs lost to COVID-19
Vox, Christian Bredemeier, Falko Juessen and Roland Winkler (28/6/20)
Report
Questions
- What are the arguments for and against substantial increased government expenditure on infrastructure projects?
- Should the UK government spend more or less on such projects than the amount already pledged? Justify your answer.
- What are the arguments for and against directing all extra government expenditure towards green projects?
- Look through the Resolution Foundation report and summarise the findings of each of its sections.
- What are the arguments for and against directing all extra government expenditure towards those sectors where there is the highest rate of job losses?
- What form could policies to protect employment take?
- How should the success of policies to generate employment be measured?
- What form does hysteresis play on the post-Covid-19 labour market? What four shocks mean that employment will not simply return to the pre-Covid situation?
Three international agencies, the IMF, the European Commission and the OECD, all publish six-monthly forecasts for a range of countries. As each agency’s forecasts have been published this year, so the forecasts for economic growth and other macroeconomic indicators, such as unemployment, have got more dire.
The IMF was the first to report. Its World Economic Outlook, published on 14 April, forecast that in the UK real GDP would fall by 6.5% in 2020 and rise by 4% in 2021 (not enough to restore GDP to 2019 levels); in the USA it would fall by 5.9% this year and rise by 4.7% next year; in the eurozone it would fall by 7.5% this year and rise by 4.7% next.
The European Commission was next to report. Its AMECO database was published on 6 May. This forecast that UK real GDP would fall by 8.3% this year and rise by 6% next; in the USA it would fall by 6.5% this year and rise by 4.9% next; in the eurozone it would fall by 7.7% this year and rise by 6.3% next.
The latest to report was the OECD on 10 June. The OECD Economic Outlook was the most gloomy. In fact, it produced two sets of forecasts.
The first, more optimistic one (but still more gloomy than the forecasts of the other two agencies) was based on the assumption that lockdowns would continue to be lifted and that there would be no second outbreak later in the year. This ‘single-hit scenario’ forecast that UK real GDP would fall by 11.5% this year and rise by 9% next (a similar picture to France and Italy); in the USA it would fall by 7.3% this year and rise by 4.1% next; in the eurozone it would fall by 9.1% this year and rise by 6.5% next.
The second set of OECD forecasts was based on the assumption that there would be a second wave of the virus and that lockdowns would have to be reinstated. Under this ‘double-hit scenario’, the UK’s GDP is forecast to fall by 14.0% this year and rise by 5.0 per cent next; in the USA it would fall by 8.5% this year and rise by 1.9% next; in the eurozone it would fall by 11.5% this year and rise by 3.5% next.
The first chart shows the four sets of forecasts (including two from the OECD) for a range of countries. The first four bars for each country are the forecasts for 2020; the other four bars for each country are for 2021. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the chart.)
The second chart shows unemployment rates from 2006. The figures for 2020 and 2021 are OECD forecasts based on the double-hit assumption. You can clearly see the dramatic rise in unemployment in all the countries in 2020. In some cases it is forecast that there will be a further rise in 2021. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the chart.)
As the OECD states:
In both scenarios, the recovery, after an initial, rapid resumption of activity, will take a long time to bring output back to pre-pandemic levels, and the crisis will leave long-lasting scars – a fall in living standards, high unemployment and weak investment. Job losses in the most affected sectors, such as tourism, hospitality and entertainment, will particularly hit low-skilled, young, and informal workers.
But why have the forecasts got gloomier? There are both demand- and supply-side reasons.
Aggregate demand has fallen more dramatically than originally anticipated. Lockdowns have lasted longer in many countries than governments had initially thought, with partial lockdowns, which replace them, taking a long time to lift. With less opportunity for people to go out and spend, consumption has fallen and saving has risen. Businesses that have shut, some permanently, have laid off workers or they have been furloughed on reduced incomes. This too has reduced spending. Even when travel restrictions are lifted, many people are reluctant to take holidays at home and abroad and to use public transport for fear of catching the virus. This reluctance has been higher than originally anticipated. Again, spending is lower than before. Even when restaurants, bars and other public venues are reopened, most operate at less than full capacity to allow for social distancing. Uncertainty about the future has discouraged firms from investing, adding to the fall in demand.
On the supply side, there has been considerable damage to capacity, with firms closing and both new and replacement investment being put on hold. Confidence in many sectors has plummeted as shown in the third chart which looks at business and consumer confidence in the EU. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the above chart.) Lack of confidence directly affects investment with both supply- and demand-side consequences.
Achieving a sustained recovery will require deft political and economic judgements by policymakers. What is more, people are increasingly calling for a different type of economy – one where growth is sustainable with less pollution and degradation of the environment and one where growth is more inclusive, where the benefits are shared more equally. As Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, states in his speech launching the latest OECD Economic Outlook:
The aim should not be to go back to normal – normal was what got us where we are now.
Articles
OECD publications
Questions
- Why has the UK economy been particularly badly it by the Covid-19 pandemic?
- What will determine the size and timing of the ‘bounce back’?
- Why will the pandemic have “dire and long-lasting consequences for people, firms and governments”?
- Why have many people on low incomes faced harsher consequences than those on higher incomes?
- What are the likely environmental impacts of the pandemic and government measures to mitigate the effects?
The UK’s Low Pay Commission has just published its annual report. This shows that the lowest-paid 20% of workers aged 25 and over benefited from last April’s 4.4% rise in the ‘National Living Wage (NLW)’, the name the government gives to the statutory minimum wage for people in this age group. Although only around 6.5% of such workers are paid at the NLW, when it rises this tends to push up wage rates which are just above the NLW as employers seek to maintain the differential.
If the new NLW is above the equilibrium rate for those receiving it, it would be expected that firms would respond by employing fewer workers. However, the Low Pay Commission found no evidence that rises in the NLW caused unemployment. Instead, employers responded by combinations of increasing prices, accepting lower profit margins, restructuring their workforce and reducing the gaps between pay bands.
Over the longer term, employers often seek to increase labour productivity to offset the higher cost per worker of paying increased minimum wage rates. This, however, could lead to a reduction in employment if it involves substituting capital for labour or if greater labour efficiency does not result in a sufficient increase in total output to compensate for an increase in output per worker.
Articles
Report and data
Questions
- Demonstrate on a supply and demand diagram for a perfectly competitive labour market the impact of a rise in the minimum wage on employment and unemployment in that market. Assume that the market is initially in equilibrium at the previous minimum wage rate.
- For what reasons in such markets may a rise in the minimum wage not lead to a rise in unemployment?
- Now demonstrate the effect of a rise in the minimum wage in a monopsonistic market. Assume that the previous minimum wage was previously being paid by the employer.
- For what reasons may the employer in the previous question choose to retain employment at the current level?
- For what reasons may the effect of a rise in the minimum wage be different in the long run from the short run?
- How can employers avoid paying the minimum wage (a) when workers work in the ‘gig’ economy; (b) when workers have to travel as part of their job: e.g. care workers moving from house to house; (c) workers working from home producing items for an employer, such as clothing or jewelry, or providing a service such as telesales?