Countdown as workers face the end of furlough
Over 100,000 people in the North West are still on the scheme
Last updated 3rd Oct 2021
The government's furlough scheme is set to end this week prompting fears from some about what happens next.
Around 1.6 million people are still enrolled on the scheme which is set to end on Thursday.
According to The Resolution Foundation, the scheme has supported 11.6 million workers over the course of the pandemic at a cost of £70 billion and has subsidised 2.3 billion working days.
But the think tank is warning that the country is set for a "bumpy" autumn as the end of furlough coincides with rising energy bills and the £20 a week cut to Universal Credit
The Foundation said it expects around one million employees to be on the furlough scheme when it closes on Thursday.
While most workers on the scheme should return to their previous jobs, particularly those on partial furlough, the think tank predicted that hundreds of thousands more workers will be looking for new jobs from October, just as UC is due to be cut by £20 a week.
Older workers, who are now the most likely to be on furlough, face the greatest risk of unemployment, said the report.
"Britain is set for a bumpy Autumn"
Dan Tomlinson, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: "Furlough has been as critical to fighting the Covid crisis as nationalising the banks was to fighting the global financial crisis, and it has been even more important in terms of protecting people's living standards.
"The scheme has prevented the UK from experiencing catastrophic levels of unemployment, and its extension to 18 months - at a cost of £70 billion - has been worth every penny.
"As we prepare for a post-furlough jobs market this autumn, hundreds of thousands more workers will be looking for work and older workers in particular face the risk of unemployment and early retirement as they are most likely to still be on furlough.
"Record levels of job vacancies should hopefully mean this mass job search is relatively short-term, but Britain is set for a bumpy autumn as the end of furlough coincides with rising energy bills and the £20 a week cut to Universal Credit."
"The future is worrying"
Workers themselves are in the dark about what could happen next. Richard, a pilot from Wigan who passed his final training shortly before the pandemic said:
"I've had the luxury of being paid for 18 months and doing naff all, so you can look at it that way but the other side is, my job could be obsolete if they don't get flying again.
"My training was a lot of money, the industry was going well and then in February/March the industry just slumped.
"You think, what have I done? I've just remortgaged my house for my training, I've done this and I've got no job left, furlough saved me but the future is worrying times."