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Breaking > What's the impact of #COVIDー19 on the #UK #labourmarket? How bad are things already – and what’s going to happen next? @abicadams and colleagues at @OxfordEconDept @econ_uzh & @Cambridge_Uni have just published the first UK survey results. Thread
Headline figures are grim: 57% work less than usual, 8% have already lost their jobs, and a third of those still working expect to lose their job by the summer. Half the UK workforce expect to have problems paying their bills.
But here’s what really matters: the impacts of COVID-19 response are not equally distributed across the population – the young, low-earners, and those on insecure contracts (from #zerohours to #gigeconomy) are hit hardest.
And it’s not just workers who suffer: a lack of decent #socialprotection creates incentives to work even when sick – and thus the potential to spread the virus even further: 43% of workers without paid sick leave ‘would definitely go to work with a cold or light fever’
The full study is available here: https://abiadams.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/UK_Inequality_Briefing.pdf For now, a few more crucial insights from the authors' summary briefing >>
Who's most impacted by #COVIDー19 response? 1) the under 30s. Both hours worked and income have *already* taken a hit.
Who's most impacted by #COVIDー19 response? 2) those on low incomes. If you earn less than 20k, chances of losing your job to COVID-19 are more than twice of those on 40k+.
Who's most impacted by #COVIDー19 response? 3) the precariat, including the (false) self-employed. It’s the single biggest driver of suffering from COVID-19, across the board of indicators (job loss, lower earnings, struggling with bills)
Working from home is similarly directly correlated to income: only 30% of those earning less than 20k can switch to home working, as opposed to 70% in the brackets above 40k.
These graphs tell the full, scary story: on the left-hand side, #precariouswork (self-employed, zero-hours, gigs, temps, …) – on the right, permanent & salaried jobs. Watch for the difference in impact across earnings, hours, pay, and unemployment
That’s it, for now – the whole briefing (as well as a similar analysis of the US #labormarket) is available above. Great work by @abicadams , @teodoraboneva1 , @martagolin and C. Rauh!
