John Lewis, Upper Crust, Topshop, Airbus, WHSmith, Royal Mail, Easy Jet.
These are just some of the household names that have announced thousands of job losses in the past few days. And while losses would be far higher had the government not introduced the coronavirus job retention scheme, recent polling suggests that half of all businesses expect to lay off workers as the scheme unwinds. Even without a second wave of the virus, an estimated 10 million workers face the risk of unemployment.
This risk is not equally distributed. Worryingly, those local authorities with the highest proportion of furloughed workers also have the highest proportion of benefit claimants – and so already face significant employment challenges. Nearly half of at-risk workers currently earn less than £10 an hour, they are far less likely to be qualified to degree level and far more likely to have no qualifications at all. In short, they are among the least resilient to the growing unemployment crisis. Unless we act now, there is a real risk that rather than levelling up, "left behind" communities will fall even further behind.
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New jobs, retrain and switch careers
In a joint paper, published ahead of the chancellor’s statement tomorrow, the Learning and Work Institute and Reform think tank has called on the government to respond to this challenge with a comprehensive and ambitious package of employment and skills support to help at-risk workers find new jobs, retrain and switch careers.
We have called for the introduction of a universal support offer to help as many at-risk workers as possible into learning, career planning or job search – including online support and one-to-one careers advice, as well as extending current entitlements to free learning up to level 3 qualifications, for all adults.
Inevitably, some people will need additional light-touch support to find a new job, such as signposting to vacancies and CV writing. For others, the sectoral nature of this recession means that their only option will be to change career. Our proposed package of career changer support includes enhanced careers advice, a £5,000 learning account for accredited training, and sector-based ambition programmes and apprenticeships to bring together businesses and workers.
We know that many career changers will need to take a step down in order to take a step across into a new sector. This is unaffordable for many, presenting an often-intractable barrier to retraining. We propose a time-limited, means-tested career changer grant of up to £3,000 or a career changer premium in universal credit, to mitigate the short-term impact of wage drops. To incentivise businesses to hire apprentices and career changers, we also suggest that firms should be allowed to use a proportion of their apprenticeship levy to support wages, with an equivalent grant for SMEs.
It is hard to argue that investing in skills, particularly for low-paid workers, is anything other than overdue: since 2009-10, the government spending on adult learning in England has halved. Our proposed package would cost £3.2 billion over the next year – just 5 per cent of the projected overall cost of the coronavirus job retention scheme. Invested well, we believe that this can boost productivity and help prevent the devastating costs of a second spike in unemployment. Failing to act would surely come with a far higher price tag.
Dr Fiona Aldridge is director of policy and research at the Learning and Work Institute
