COVID and Wage Subsidy in UK – Intense pressure this weekend to offer a massive “second wave”

The chancellor Rishi Sunak is under intense pressure this weekend to offer a massive “second wave” of financial support to businesses within weeks amid growing fears of a catastrophic early summer of spiralling unemployment and company bankruptcies.

With the government’s £40bn job-retention scheme running until the end of June, business groups and the Labour party are demanding that Sunak extend the scheme as a matter of urgency to give an essential lifeline to the UK economy.

Under the scheme – known as furloughing – the government covers 80% of the wages of workers who are staying at home and not working at all, up to a cap of £2,500 a month. So far an estimated 140,000 UK companies have opted to furlough a total of around 4 million staff.

But large and small employers have warned the Treasury that they will need to notify the government of widescale redundancies over the next fortnight if it fails to give details soon of subsidies it will offer beyond June.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @ Business leaders: extend furlough to avoid millions of job losses | Business | The Guardian