By the end of the UK's job retention scheme, which ran from April 2020, to September 2021, approximately **** million jobs, from *** million different employers, were furloughed in the United Kingdom. The day with the most jobs furloughed at once was May 8, 2020, when **** million jobs were on the job retention scheme. The scheme, introduced in response to the economic damage caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, covered ** percent of an employees' usual monthly wage, up to ***** British pounds a month. How much did the scheme cost? The UK government spent approximately ** billion British pounds on the job retention scheme. Due to spending commitments such as this, as well as depressed revenue sources, UK government finances took a severe hit in the 2020/21 financial year. Government borrowing was approximately ***** billion pounds in 2020/21, while government debt as a share of GDP shot up from around ** percent in 2018/19 to almost ** percent by 2020/21. Getting this debt down has proven difficult in subsequent financial years, with high inflation, war in Ukraine, and the Cost of Living Crisis putting even more pressure on public finances. Popular scheme not enough to save Sunak Former Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, held the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer throughout the duration of the furlough scheme. While this scheme and Sunak himself were popular for much of that time, Sunak saw his popularity tumble. Shortly after succeeding Liz Truss as Prime Minister in October 2021, Sunak was seen by ** percent of people as being the best person for his job, but by May 2024, just before he announced the 2024 General Election, just ** percent of people thought he made the best Prime Minister. Sunak and the Conservatives went on to suffer a historic loss at this election, winning just *** seats, compared with the *** won in the 2019 General Election.

Per pupil income information for the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 for all LA maintained schools, aggregated by phase. The data includes both a monetary and percentage comparison between each year’s data. All data is in nominal terms so does not remove the effects of inflation.

In 2024/25, income tax accounted for 10.5 percent of gross domestic product in the United Kingdom, the largest tax as a share of GDP in this financial year. Throughout this time period, income tax has accounted for the highest share of GDP among UK taxes, followed by VAT and National Insurance Tax being the second-largest tax, depending on the relevant year. What does the government spend this on? For the 2025/26 fiscal year, the UK government expects to spend around 379 billion British pounds on social protection, which includes spending on pensions and welfare. The budget for health spending is 277 billion pounds, followed by 146 billion pounds on education. Since the 1980s, the share of GDP the UK spends on health has increased substantially, growing from four percent in 1984/85, to seven percent before the COVID-19 pandemic. By contrast, spending on defence fell from 4.6 percent of GDP to just 1.8 percent in the same time period. Debt approaching 100 percent of GPD The fourth-largest spending category in the latest UK government budget was that of debt interest, at a substantial 126 billion pounds. After taking a significant economic hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK's government debt increased from around 80 percent of GDP, to almost 97 percent in one fiscal year. Although that debt is not expected to increase further in the coming years, the costs of financing that debt has put immense pressure on government finances, especially with rising borrowing costs.

Covid-19 has severely impacted employment opportunity and earning potential for workers in Cambodia's garment and footwear sector. Manifesting initially as an economic crisis, the impacts of manufacturing shutdowns and consumer lockdowns around the world slowed the garment sector's output. This led to employment suspensions and terminations affecting hundreds of thousands of workers in Cambodia alone.

For two years, the ReFashion study has uniquely tracked the impacts of the pandemic on a cohort of 200 female workers in Cambodia, from January 2020 through to December 2021. The study combines a quantitative survey of female workers to measure monthly trends in employment, household finances, and wellbeing, with qualitative interviews to explore emergent themes in greater depth. Each of these components is repeated with the same cohort of participants at strategic intervals. The research methods are designed to capture an in-depth and long-term understanding of women workers' lives through the pandemic.

Our findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a crisis of over-indebtedness for workers in the garment industry, with severe consequences for the short and long-term health and wellbeing of workers and their families. Over-indebtedness is reached when a credit borrower 'is continuously struggling to meet repayment deadlines and has to make unduly high sacrifices related to his or her loan obligations'.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, credit borrowing had become commonplace among low-income households in Cambodia, which has one of the largest microfinance industries in the world in terms of borrowers per capita. This widescale borrowing enables households to temporarily deal with the lack of social protection and public services in the country, allowing them to meet costs of health care and invest in housing in times of urgent need. High levels of borrowing by garment workers specifically, as evidenced in the ReFashion study, indicate that flagship efforts to foster 'Decent Work' in the garment sector in Cambodia have not precluded the need for some workers to take on significant loans to supplement their low wages and fill the gaps in social protection provision.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, garment workers' 'financial inclusion' became even more vital to their ability to cope with the economic emergency they faced, by using access to credit to smooth short terms gaps in income caused by employment suspensions. Yet at the same time, reduced earning capacity hindered workers' ability to make existing loan repayments. To meet outstanding commitments, many resorted to reducing daily expenditure on necessities including food. Most workers reported their household food intake as inadequate and many reported experiencing hunger during the pandemic. Such unduly high sacrifices are neither just nor sustainable.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having significant repercussions on the global garment industry, of huge importance not only to Cambodia's economy, but also to its 1 million workers, 80% of whom are women. Many garment factories are interrupting production with the effect that 1/4 of workers have been dismissed or temporarily suspended. Formal social protection in the sector, though improving due to multi-stakeholder efforts, is weak and fragile. Mixed-method longitudinal research will track and amplify the experiences and coping mechanisms of 200 women workers as they navigate the financial repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project's interdisciplinary team from human geography, political economy, and organisation studies will generate new knowledge on underlying and differentiating determinants of risk and resilience arising from formal and informal social protections.

The ambitious study will focus its policy attention on learning to 'Build Back Better' social protection to prevent and mitigate longer-term impacts of the pandemic and future risk events. Our approach centres women's representation in planning and decision-making as critical to 'stitching back better' just and resilient garment supply chains to make progress towards gender equality (SDG5), inclusive economic growth and decent work (SDG8). The project's impact, within its 18-month lifetime, will be compelled by its partnerships with, and pro-active convening together, of government (Cambodian Ministry of Labor, British Embassy), regulators (ILO, Better Factories Cambodia), industry (Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, H&M), think tanks (ODI), workers' organisations (CATU, the only female-led union in Cambodia), and women's media (Women's Media Center and the Messenger Band).