In all the reporting on the impact of the pandemic on employment, one important factor has gone unnoticed. It is the private sector that is taking the entire hit, with public sector jobs almost untouched. That 25 per cent drop in GDP over the last six months is overwhelmingly contraction of the private sector. Throughout the pandemic I have been talking every day to people in the public and private sector, and there is a complete difference in attitude. It is like two different worlds. Private sector workers are grateful if they still just have a job, aware that so many are losing theirs. Entrepreneurs have been desperately struggling to save businesses they have been building up for decades. They have had to cut back drastically, close down whole businesses, try and reinvent themselves as something else just to keep money coming in. The Treasury has unleashed support schemes that are unprecedented in scope and scale, and for which businesses are incredibly grateful, but many have still been left desperate.
Those in the public sector have been far more reticent about ending the lockdown, because they have not had that financial imperative to do so
All the pleas for help I have had on jobs have come from the private sector, and for many of them it has been a genuinely scary time.
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