The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge numbers of people to become unemployed. Lockdowns and other restrictive measures have caused a wide range of industries to either operate on reduced scales or close down altogether.
While the UK’s jobs situation is in a terrible state at the minute – at the time of writing, lockdown is still in place and no end date has been confirmed – some sectors have indeed been able to thrive. In this article, we’ll look at the jobs market as a whole see which ones have actually added jobs and talk about the future of the market in general.
Sectors That Have Cut Jobs
One of the most notable effects the pandemic has had on life in the UK has been the devastation it’s caused to employment levels. Pre-pandemic unemployment levels were actually quite low – the virus and the nationwide restrictions that came into effect changed that, unfortunately. From July to September 2020, the UK’s unemployment rate was 4.9% – this is the highest the unemployment rate has been for three years. The figure represents 1.7 million people without work.
The majority of sectors have experienced job losses. The hardest hit, of course, is the hospitality industry, which is estimated to have lost close to a staggering 300,000 jobs. Other sectors that have taken big hits include the retail and wholesale, the manufacturing, the culture and recreation, and the admin and support services industries, to name a few.
What’s reassuring is that the job losses could have been greater. Many industries have been able to save jobs by introducing Covid-friendly measures and having people work from home when working in the office isn’t possible. The figures are terrible, of course, but the situation as a whole could have been a lot more severe.
Sectors That Have Added Jobs
There are two key sectors that experienced a growth in job numbers throughout the pandemic. These are the public administration and health services industries. From February to November, the former added approximately 27,000 jobs, while the latter saw its job numbers increase by 74,000.
It should come as no surprise that these two industries have been able to weather the storm, so to speak, and grow in the process. Public administration has been needed more than ever during the pandemic, as have people working in the health and social care sector.
Both of these industries have grown because they’ve been needed a lot more. Others are important, of course, but they’ve not been able to operate as normal because of various measures introduced to curb the spread of the virus. Countless restaurants, bars and entertainment venues have had to spend most of 2020 with their doors closed, for example.
What should be pointed out is that even the sectors that lost jobs overall still managed to add some; it’s just that the losses greatly outweighed the gains. In the retail sector, for example, many supermarkets added jobs, though a greater number of jobs were lost by many other shops and stores. This is because those deemed non-essential have spent many months closed.
Will The Jobs Situation Get Worse Or Better?
At the time of writing, close to 5 million people have been vaccinated. The plan is to have offered vaccination to the vast majority of the population by the closing months of the year. Even so, the country is still in lockdown and there’s no confirmation as to when things can start opening up again.
What this means for jobs is that there’s still going to be a lot of unemployment and uncertainty for a good few months at least. Industries that have experienced losses may well have more to come as things remain closed. On the other hand, the two industries that have actually added jobs may see more new positions created as demand for them continues to exist.
For those industries that have experienced mass job losses, hopefully we’re past the halfway point and the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight. What everyone wants is for the situation to be under control so that things can start opening up again, jobs can be created and employment levels can rise.
What’s encouraging is that the UK has recovered from mass unemployment before. At one point in 2011, the country’s unemployment rate hit 8.1%. Since then, it’s gradually gone down, reaching about 3.85% by the end of 2019. This figure of 8.1% is a lot higher than the current one – if the country can recover from this, it can most certainly recover from the current situation, which is statistically less serious.