High streets bearing brunt of jobs blight caused by Covid-19

DESERTED high streets and city centres are hampering Britain’s jobs recovery, new research suggests.

Think tank the Centre for Cities and recruitment site Indeed found that seven months after the nationwide lockdown was imposed, job vacancies had failed to return to pre-Covid levels in all 63 towns and cities analysed.

Aberdeen had the steepest fall with a 75 per cent year-on-year decline, followed by Edinburgh (57 per cent).

The report found UK vacancies were 46 per cent behind last year’s level, caused by more people working from home, leading to a fall in demand for local services in big cities.

Andrew Carter, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said: ‘While unemployment continues to rise, the number of jobs available to people who find themselves out of work is far below its level last year in every single large city and town in the UK. This could have potentially catastrophic long-term consequences for people and the economy.’

Pawel Adrjan, of recruitment website Indeed, said the rise in remote working and entire regions being placed under stricter controls, meant service jobs in large towns and cities ‘could become scarcer still and pull the UK into a jobs spiral’.

He said: ‘That could mean a very long winter ahead for the millions of people currently unemployed.’

Research by the Local Data Company and PwC UK, meanwhile, has revealed shop closures have hit record levels, more than doubling in Scotland in the first half of this year. Figures show that 703 chain operator outlets have shut permanently this year, with 400 shops opening.

The Scottish high street’s decline is the worst in five years.

Across the UK, 11,120 chain operator outlets shut and 5,119 shops opened.

Consumer analysts Springboard say Scotland has suffered a 37.8 per cent drop in all shopping footfall since last year. But it is in the high streets where it has suffered the most with a 20.4 per cent drop in footfall in the week to October 11 alone, compared with a 4.5 per cent decline across the UK.

Further closures are expected as support schemes for workers and businesses wind down this month.

The Scottish Retail Consortium said Covid-19 has led to a ‘seismic shift’ in shopping patterns.