This is likely to be a very conservative estimate.
If suicides appear to have increased during the lockdown, they’re most certainly going to skyrocket once these jobs are lost and people realize that nothing is ever going to be the way it used to be.
The government already estimated that 150,000 people will die as a result of the lockdown.
How many more will die once more than a quarter of all jobs disappear?
Britain’s coronavirus lockdown will take more than 6.5million jobs out of the economy, according to estimates contained in a new study.
Research by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex says this equates to around a quarter of the UK’s total jobs, with more than half the positions in certain sectors to be lost.
It comes as the Government was warned support for businesses during the coronavirus pandemic must come faster if people’s livelihoods are to be saved.
Accommodation and food services are predicted to suffer the worst rate of cuts, with 75.1 per cent of jobs lost, or around 1.3million positions.
Ranked second was ‘other services’ at 50.2 per cent, ahead of ‘wholesale, retail and repair of motor vehicles’ at 47.6 per cent – or roughly two million jobs.
Next came transport and storage on 44 per cent, or some 700,000 positions, before a gap to ‘administrative and support services’, at 26.5 per cent.
The study shows the knock-on effects of certain industries on other sectors, with the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector tipped to lose one job in 10 due to reduced demand from the accommodation and food sector.
Among sectors losing jobs, those faring best in the study were public administration/defence/social security (1.5 per cent), real estate (1.6 per cent), and mining, energy and water supply (2.7 per cent).
Certain sectors showed an increase in their workforces, chiefly health and social work, with a 27.1 per cent rise, and ‘professional, scientific and technical activities’ (up 3.4 per cent).
The institute’s modelling reflects the capacity of some people to work from home, which leaves some sectors less affected than others.
While the study predicts job losses will be mostly temporary, Professor Matteo Richiardi, an expert on modelling labour markets who led the research, warned the risk of jobs being permanently lost depends on the duration of the lockdown.
‘If this is short, say a few months, the links between employers and employees of affected industries might not be severed, and individual careers might not suffer too much,’ he told The Observer newspaper.
‘Under a longer lockdown, losses of human capital and scarring effects will occur. The economy will still bounce back, but at a higher cost for individuals.’
Prof Richiardi said the analysis confirmed a continued lockdown was economically unsustainable, which is likely to add to pressure on the Government to ease restrictions and revitalise the economy.
‘This is why we need to make the most out of the extra time the lockdown is buying us, and increase our capacity to trace and isolate new cases, especially asymptomatic cases, so that the economy can be restarted before a vaccine is ready,’ he told the paper.
The lockdown is both economically and psychologically unsustainable.
Once people start getting calls about their jobs no longer existing, everything will turn even more chaotic.
“What do you mean I’m not an essential worker?”
Never forget that all of the lives that will be lost as a result of the economic collapse are the victims of mass hysteria.
The virus was never capable of killing the amount of people that will die because of the lockdown.