I've been trying to think through what the job protection scheme means for school leavers labour market prospects. Here's what I've got.

In a different recession, unemployment increases from job losses and business closures - new entrants join that pool. In this recession, unemployment increases by far less, because workers are furloughed. Job separations fall and vacancies drop.

So new entrants are over-represented in the unemployed pool and remain there longer. When recovery happens in other recessions, different cohorts of unemployed people are searching for jobs at the same time. Now, its mostly just the newest cohorts.

The creation of new vacancies could be slow - perhaps even slower that when the recovery involved rehiring workers rather than unfurloughing them. So the process of finding a job is harder and the burden of this is not shared more evenly over the generations.

What's hopefully offsetting it? The fact that more businesses stay open and the recovery should be quicker. The youngest may be the most exposed to difficult job search, but they don't have to wait as long for new business to begin and demand to return to the economy.

None of this is by way of saying that the job protection scheme isn't the right thing to do, just a thought about the age distribution effects of creating a lot of education-leaving labour market outsiders.