Labour Market Statistics October 2020: Fastest ever rise in redundancies, on course for at least 600 thousand lay-offs by the end of the year
13 Oct 2020
Commenting on today’s figures, IES Director Tony Wilson said:
'Redundancies are growing at their fastest ever rate, doubling in the last three months alone. This morning’s figures confirm that redundancies will peak higher in this recession than they did in the last crisis, and we’re still forecasting that there’ll be at least six hundred thousand lay-offs by the end of year. So unfortunately the worst may well still be ahead of us.
'Revisions to earlier estimates also show that the official measure of employment has fallen by nearly half a million since the pandemic began, which is the fastest fall in employment since 2009. This is now starting to feed through into higher unemployment, which again is going to continue to rise through the autumn. There are some signs of improvement however in today’s data, with the most recent flash estimate for payroll employees showing that employment started to level off through September. While this is positive, with the coronavirus infections now rising strongly again it feels unlikely that we’ll start to see much growth in employment and hiring in the coming months.'
Full briefing note available here