The good and bad news about Britain’s labour market

Now that the Chancellor’s furlough scheme has come to an end, are employers rushing to lay off those workers whose wages have been paid, at least in part, by the government? 

The good news for Rishi Sunak – and the taxpayer, who footed the bill for this multi-billion pound scheme – is that the early evidence suggests they are not: in the three months leading up to August, the headline unemployment rate dipped again. It is now down to 4.5 per cent, having peaked just over five per cent last winter.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics will still take several months to show the true impact of the scheme ending at the end of September. The data update for August, though, offers another reason to be cautiously optimistic that many furloughed workers are keeping their jobs. 

But the picture in the labour market isn’t necessarily all rosy: if anything, a wholly different crisis is emerging than the one that was expected.