Study calls for focus on upskilling as 850,000 jobs at risk

A LEADING think-tank has warned that 850,000 jobs are at risk from September when the job-saving furlough scheme set up in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak ends.

Workers spent a total of roughly 6.4 billion hours (equivalent to 700,000 years) on the job retention scheme in 2020 and are predicted to spend 3.3 billion more on the scheme in 2021, according to new analysis from the New Economics Foundation.

While analysis suggests around 470 million hours were spent on furlough in Yorkshire and the Humber in 2020, with a further 240 million hours projected to be spent on furlough in 2021 under current policy arrangements.

In order to avoid a surge in unemployment driven by the tapering of the furlough scheme researchers have called for an extending to the furlough beyond September and integrating a training offer into a future scheme while upskilling and increasing education for workers.

Alex Chapman, a senior researcher from the New Economics Foundation, said there is a “cast-iron case” for a longer-term job support scheme, encouraging employers to keep workers in at least partial employment, while skilling them for the jobs and industries of the future.

He said: “The Government... has been so worried about avoiding a scheme that subsidises jobs that may never return that it has failed to seize the opportunity to use the scheme to skill up and support workers back into employment, and transition workers whose jobs do get cut into new roles.”

Andy Haldane, the Yorkshireborn chief economist of the Bank of England, said: “Avoiding that chronic economic ailment will require structural, skill-focused policies.”