More than one in five companies in the United Kingdom plans to lay off workers, according to a study published Monday on the impact of the pandemic which is likely to reduce unemployment to the highest since the 1980s, warns an official of the Bank of England.
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The British job market, which before the crisis was breaking records of strength, will suffer in the next three months from the consequences of the cessation of activity, highlights this study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development ( CIPD) and the Adecco temporary working group.
They say the companies have stopped recruiting and are freezing wages. And half of them also plan not to increase salaries next year.
Of the more than 2,000 employers surveyed, 21% want to lay off workers in the next three months.
This is a slight increase compared to the 16% figure recorded in the previous survey published the previous quarter, before the pandemic hit activity.
This modest increase is explained, according to the study, by the massive use by businesses of the partial unemployment scheme put in place by the government to limit layoffs.
According to the ICPD, this mechanism made it possible to avoid 4.2 million job losses.