PBE CEO Matt Whittaker gives his reaction to this morning's ONS Labour Market statistics.

“As the government focuses on how best to support employment in the face of the second Covid wave, today’s figures provide a powerful reminder of the pain associated with the jobs already lost during the first. Redundancies have jumped to their highest rate since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis more than a decade ago, even after accounting for the billions being spent by the government each month on protecting jobs.

“With the country braced for a tough winter, the worsening health, economic and social crisis is inevitably driving a surge in demand for the country’s charities. Yet with charity finances under severe pressure, there is a real question mark over the sector’s capacity to cope with this demand. Just as government is adjusting its crisis response to provide direct support for businesses, so too should it revisit its approach to the charity sector – directing more resources to those organisations that are so vital to the country’s ability to weather the current storm.“

---

Contact PBE's press office here.