After Mr. Sunak’s statement in Parliament on Wednesday, the chief executive of Burger King UK said 5 to 10 percent of its restaurants would most likely not survive, leading to between 800 and 1,600 job losses. The next day, Boots said it planned to lay off more than 4,000 people, about 7 percent of its work force, and John Lewis said it would permanently close eight department stores, putting 1,300 jobs at risk.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the ending of the furlough program, confirmed by the new bonus plan, was badly timed and likely to have the unintended effect of prompting more layoffs.
“It doesn’t motivate employers to wait and see over the next couple of months,” Rory MacQueen, an economist at the institute, said. “This motivates them to make a snap decision early.” Instead, the government should have kept the furlough program open and waited for its costs to go down as people returned to work, he added.
Alongside the thousands of work coaches hired in job centers, Mr. Sunak said £40 million would be provided to finance a new job search support service by the private sector. It will focus on helping people who have been unemployed for less than three months find work.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/business/economy/britain-jobs-plan-layoffs.html
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