The full monty: facing up to the challenge of the coronavirus labour market crisis

The coronavirus [Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)] crisis has been unparalleled in its scale and speed. Never before has the UK government shut down such large swathes of the economy. As the lockdown disproportionately hit big, labour-intensive sectors like retail and hospitality, it quickly became clear that this was going to be not just a health crisis, but a jobs crisis, too. The Government took unprecedented action to save millions of jobs when it introduced the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (JRS), preventing mass unemployment in this initial lockdown phase of the crisis. But the storm has not passed. This report takes stock of the impact of coronavirus so far, considers what further labour market challenges the pandemic has in store, and sets out proposals for tackling them. Because those challenges are large, and more difficult to address than those experienced so far, our proposals are for a labour market policy response of unprecedented size and breadth. The alternative is that unemployment and economic inactivity do lasting damage to our living standards and our nation's prosperity.

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