There could be more than 10 million unemployed people in the UK right now

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According to Rishi Sunak in his announcement on furloughed employees today there are about 7.5 million jobs at almost 1m companies in the scheme now. Many of these people are really unemployed now: we have no idea if they will return to work. Many will not, I am sorry to say.

We do not have real-time unemployment data in the UK.

And we have no idea how many of the 5 million unemployed people in the country will be applying for support yet. I will be amazed if it is less than 2 million.

We know that there have been 1.5 million excess universal credit claims.

There were more than a million unemployed when this began.

Add it all up, and allow for UC claimants being a double count ()I am being generous there) and we get to more than 10 million unemployed people in the UK - roughly one in three employees.

That's looking very grim indeed.

No wonder furlough cannot end.


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