The Office for National Statistics published a report yesterday on the impact on wellbeing of Covid. The review covered March 2020 to April 2021 and sought, they suggest, to cover as many variables as possible.
Their summary noted:
- Those groups that were financially impacted at the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic were still worse off up to mid-April 2021; such as the self-employed, who were three times as likely to report reduced income and twice as likely to use savings to cover living costs compared with employees.
- Those in the lowest income bracket (up to £10,000 per annum) continued to be more likely to report negative impacts to personal well-being in comparison with higher brackets; such as the coronavirus pandemic making their mental health worse (18%) and feeling stressed or anxious (32%).
- Those in the highest income brackets (£40,000 a year or more) continued to be more likely to report that the coronavirus pandemic was negatively impacting their working life, and were six times as likely to report the pandemic was having a strain on their working relationships; those employed were over twice as likely to find working from home difficult than those in the lowest income bracket.
- Employed parents were less likely to be furloughed since the beginning of 2021, unlike in the first phase of lockdown, but were still more likely to report reduced income than non-parents; despite the financial impacts, all parents continued to feel less lonely and report higher scores of feeling that things done in life are worthwhile.
- Those aged under 30 years were consistently more likely to report that their income had been reduced (15%) than those over 60 years (5%); however, a higher proportion of those under 30 years reported being able to save for the year ahead (50%) than older age groups (39%).
- Perceptions of incomes and savings also appeared to differ; for example, those in the youngest age group were less financially resilient than older age groups, with 47% of those under 30 years reporting that they could afford an unexpected expense compared with 71% of those over 60 years, despite a higher proportion reporting that they were able to save for the year ahead.
There are unsurprising issues here.
The least well off have suffered most. Conclusions 1, 2, 5 and 6 all support this. 4 tends to as well.
I am struggling to interpret 3. Is it simply a measure of feeling responsible? Or something else?
But what I also note is 6: 53% of young people did not have the means to tackle an unexpected bill. And only 29% of pensioners do. This is a measure of real stress. And what it indicates is the real impact of wealth inequality in the UK.
Economists keep on talking about the savings from Cvod that are going to be spent. Most in the UK do not have savings, and many who do have no significant savings.
I am well aware that at a macro level excess savings do not serve the economy. At a micro level their absence harms wellbeing enormously. And what is required is a better safety net which at present savings provide for some, but not for many.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
I think that I can explain (3) above very well indeed as I work for people on that pay grade.
This group could very well be your management types – those who like or have to manage people directly and whom are under pressure to deliver. Covid has had a huge impact on manager to worker proximity and managing remotely induces a feeling of powerlessness – especially amongst managers who have issues with trust or like to lead from the front.
Many managers are like mother hens – they like to have their broods (workers) under their wings – it gives them a feeling of control and validates their position (since the size of your team often dictates your pay grade).
This has got worse as the lockdowns have gone on as well as the false horizons created by Government incompetence. Some of the managers I work for are chomping at the bit to get back to normal but this desire is for them really – since the work in many cases has continued to go on (it certainly has in my line of work).
There has been an almost exponential growth in email too as a means of communication and getting things done – it’s not just zoom meetings and the like. This has made inboxes swell with information that needs to be processed and acted upon in some management capacity.
Some managers have not coped with this – especially if they rely on more informal working arrangements – I can think of a number of projects that simply ground to a halt because higher paid managers could not adapt (thank God for lower the paid middle managers in the field like me).
You’d be surprised about how many people get promoted into the £40K + income bracket without getting any help to adjust to their seniority. You can also feel very exposed and this tends to reinforce issues with trust, delegation etc., which as I said must have been exacerbated by lockdown.
Being well paid is a good thing but it is does not mean that you will be happier at work or during things like a pandemic. A lot of it has to do with poor management culture, selection and training in this country.
Thanks
PSR, I agree with your interpretation of the no.3 findings. Another thing, but I don’t know if this is across the board, is that support services have been cut in companies as part of ‘efficiency savings’ – either outsourced abroad (IT services or HR for instance) or jobs cut – secretaries or facilities management are rare things these days. This means manager grade – that 40k plus bracket – are left picking up the administrative burden. With things like overwhelming email volume, and very little support (on how it can be managed, either through software use or spreading the burden on to a secretary), I think the change in working practices have left them overwhelmed.
That it’s thought to be good business model to remove support services (just because it isn’t directly chargeable to a client so doesn’t look like profit) seems bizarre – the work then has to be done by someone, and now it’s not done by an appropriate someone. The idea that somehow software (that no one really gets proper training in) will do everything for you is a poor strategy – unless there is good integrated support services to maintain and/or customise it.
Managers (or that level), I think, have had to suddenly expand their skill set to include so many outwith their ken, or become buried in information (and expectation) overload. That category of worker is also used to being much more mobile – moving job much more easily and having choices – it must be difficult to adjust to being restricted now.
I’ve not read the full report, but I’d take exception to the apparent framing that it was Covid19 rather than the Government’s reaction to it that caused all of this.
Despite the unfortunate associated characters and connotations, I am absolutely a ‘Lockdown Sceptic’ and will remain so until I have seen a full analysis of the interventions in terms of both benefit AND cost – and an analysis of the distribution of those costs too.
I’m not sure that any other approach is reasonable.
Idiot, or psychopath? That’s the choice lockdown sceptics need to take about themselves
So it’s idiotic to expect both sides of a cost-benefit analysis is it? To request similar modeling efforts for other possible outcomes of these interventions beyond that of just projected CV19 cases and/or deaths?
Are you seriously saying it’s psychopathic to be concerned about mental health, eating disorders, obesity, cardiac-health, delayed cancer treatment, inequality (local and global) and all the rest?
Worst of all, to ignore the proven damaging effects of learning, social, immunological and health development on children by closing schools and keeping them away from friends which your chums at IndySAGE as STILL calling for – not to mention scaring the bejesus out of them in the process is what’s truly psychopathic right now.
Yes
For once Cummings got it right
The trade off was with many, many more deaths than we have had
And that was not a possible trade off
So, yes, my point stands
And still does
You are right, Adrian. Lock-down has many unintended adverse effects, and we’ll have to do a lot of work to address them.
But what is the counterfactual? Even with the lockdown, we have done considerably worse (in terms of deaths) than for example Sweden. See for example https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-covid-and-lockdown-a-look-at-the-data
Without it, potentially tens of millions of people in this country would have been infected in a space of a few weeks, the NHS overwhelmed, perhaps several hundreds of thousands of people dead unnecessarily, and many many more suffering long COVID for an unknown period.
Do you have a utility function handy so we can plug in both scenarios and see if it is positive or negative?
ED NOTE
This comment has been deleted for what I consider to be its reckless irresponsibility
Look – lets not fall out here about it eh?
The Government has screwed this up from day one – as well as responding late and even giving PPE to China in the early days they wanted herd immunity through infection, in the first instance (and lied about it) and now want HI through a vaccine even though Covid has a mutation capability that could render the vaccines impotent or hamper potency.
Lockdown was too late; too leaky and curtailed too quickly . Result: lots of death and suffering and a spluttering economy but also variants being produced. And that rabbit in the headlamp latency has not changed at the Government level.
The reality Adrian D is that we’ve actually had the worst of BOTH worlds in terms of outputs from lockdown and economic impact because of Government stupidity. And consider this : because the Government HAS actually been putting getting back to normal first. Yes – that’s right.
But they’ve handled it atrociously and even that word does not seem to suffice in describing their dilatory performance.
As has been said here many a time, the UK has chosen to accommodate Covid and not eradicate it. Well, this is the result. We are proposing to accommodate a biological changeling – something that can learn to adapt and survive in our midst. I’m not sure that has occurred to the Government yet.
The facts are that its all valid – avoidable Covid deaths, job losses , mental health issues and schooling. This is why we need to dig deeper and ask what we could do better next time. And also hold the Tories to account for their stupidity. These outcomes Adrian D were created by decisions as far back as 2010.
We won’t achieve that by beating each other up here. To fall into that trap is to be in denial and we’ve suffered enough from that attitude enough as it is. Don’t you think?
Bringing this down to where it is hurting i.e. the financially disenfranchised, credit unions welcome those who feel excluded from the money tree. You can get a small loan of up to £500 repaid over 52 weeks and if necessary paid out of benefits including OAP.
Credit Unions are not-for-profit organisations who in the main work on a volunteer model. We can also arrange for a person to receive an exclusive debit card that carries its own sort code and account number. It will therefore receive wages and benefit payments.
We don’t say we are the answer to everyone’s money problems but we are part of the solution.
Credit Unions, whose core ethos is to encourage savings
I approve of credit unions