By the end of the UK's job retention scheme, which ran from April 2020, to September 2021, approximately 11.7 million jobs, from 1.3 million different employers, were furloughed in the United Kingdom. The day with the most jobs furloughed at once was May 8, 2020, when 8.86 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 80 percent of an employees' usual monthly wage, up to 2,500 British pounds a month. How much did the scheme cost? The UK government spent approximately 70 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 333 billion pounds in 2020/21, while government debt as a share of GDP shot up from 80.3 percent in 2018/19, to 96.5 percent by 2020/21. Getting this debt down has proven difficult in subsequent financial years, with high inflation, war in Ukraine, and Cost of Living Crisis putting even more pressure on public finances. Popular scheme may not be enough to save Sunak The current 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 has since seen his popularity tumble. Shortly after succeeding Liz Truss as Prime Minister in October 2021, Sunak was seen by 30 percent of people as being the best person for his job, while his net favorability rating was around -19 percent. By May 2024, just before he announced the 2024 general election, just 19 percent of people thought he made the best Prime Minister, and his net favorability rating had fallen to -51 percent.

The job retention scheme in the United Kingdom ended on September 30, 2021, with approximately 1.16 million jobs still on furlough at its conclusion. In May 2020 the number of jobs furloughed peaked at over 8.8 million. As a cumulative total there were around 11.7 million jobs furloughed in the since the introduction of the scheme in March 2020.

At the end of the job retention scheme in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2021 there were 527.2 thousand females and 615.1 thousand males still on furlough with a further 17 thousand people of unknown gender also covered by the measure.

On September 30, 2021, at the end of the job retention scheme in the United Kingdom, there were approximately 268.6 thousand people aged between 35 and 44 still furloughed, the most of any group. Since July 2020, the age group 25 to 34 has consistently had the most people on furlough, with over 1.3 million of this age group on the job retention scheme at the start of that month.

As of November 2021 the overall cost of the United Kingdom's job retention scheme was 70 billion British pounds. The number of jobs furloughed on the scheme has been steadily declining since May 2020, with around 2.4 million jobs still in furlough by the end of October 2020.

Over 2.25 million jobs in the United Kingdom's wholesale and retail sector were furloughed on the UK's job retention scheme between April 2020 and September 2021, with a further 2.13 million thousand accommodation and food services jobs also furloughed. These two sectors were the most vulnerable to the UK's Coronavirus lockdowns, with manufacturing and administrative support work also haivng relatively high numbers furloughed.

In January 2021, approximately 9.58 million jobs in Europe's three largest economies were being supported by temporary employment schemes, with the UK's job retention scheme supporting approximately 4.88 million jobs, France's Chômage partiel scheme 2.1 million, while 2.6 million workers were on Germany's Kurzarbeit system. Although some of these partial employment mechanisms were already in place before the COVID-19 pandemic, their usage accelerated considerably after the first Coronavirus lockdowns in Spring 2020. How much will this cost European governments? Early on in the pandemic, European governments moved swiftly to limit the damage that the Coronavirus pandemic would cause to the labor market. The spectre of mass unemployment, which would put a huge strain on European benefit systems anyway, was enough to encourage significant government spending and intervention. To this end, the European Union made 100 billion Euros of loans available through it's unemployment support fund (SURE). As of March 2021, Italy had received 20.95 billion Euros in loans from the SURE mechanism, and is set to be loaned 27.4 billion Euros overall. Spain and Poland will receive the second and third highest amount from the plan, at 21.3 billion, and 15.06 billion Euros respectively. What about the UK? The United Kingdom is not involved in the European Union's SURE scheme, but has also paid substantial amounts of money to keep unemployment at bay. As of January 31, 2021, there had been more than 11.2 million jobs furloughed on the UK's job retention scheme. By this date, the expenditure of this measure had reached 53.8 billion British pounds, with this figure expected to increase further, following the extension of the scheme to September 2021.

The indicators and analysis presented in this bulletin are based on responses from the new voluntary fortnightly business survey, which captures businesses responses on how their turnover, workforce prices, trade and business resilience have been affected in the two week reference period. These data relate to the period 6 April 2020 to 19 April 2020.

During the United Kingdom's job retention scheme, which ran from April 2020 to September 2021, approximately 1.64 million jobs in London were furloughed, the highest of any region of the United Kingdom.

As of November 21, 2021 approximately 1.3 million PAYE employers in the United Kingdom had used the government's job retention scheme, providing a cumulative total of 11.7 million individual jobs.