Coronavirus is a looming crisis for British workers. We need fast action to secure jobs
New figures show 600,000 fewer people on UK payrolls. Without urgent measures, long-term unemployment looms for many Y esterdays employment figures were tough. 600,000 fewer payroll jobs. Over a million more people now on universal credit. Vacancies plummeting. Without the crucial government furlough scheme supporting 9 million workers , this would be much worse, as the Covid-19 response has suspended large parts of the economy. As lockdown eases, we are all desperately hoping that the virus stays under control, that the economy can keep reopening, and that growth and jobs will bounce back. But we cant rely on hope. There are strong reasons to believe that unemployment will get worse before it gets better, and that some people and communities will be very badly hit for a long time. That means we need government action learning lessons from crises past, but also anticipating the trends of the future and we need it fast. First, the impact of the coronavirus shock on jobs has yet to be fully felt. The Office for Budget Responsibility is warning that unemployment is likely to rise to over 3 million more than 10% of the workforce by the autumn. Businesses wont all restart. Major companies from Rolls-Royce to BP have announced redundancies. Suspended workers fear losing their jobs as furlough support is withdrawn. And school and college leavers hoping to get their first job or apprenticeship face a barren landscape. That means more serious hardship and anxiety ahead for many families. But theres also a further challenge. The Covid-19 crisis is likely to accelerate trends that were happening anyway including speeding up automation and use of technology with profound consequences for the way we work. A recent survey of global executives found that 41% of respondents are investing in accelerating automation since the pandemic started. Many of us who had never heard of Zoom three months ago now use it every day. From call centres to law firms, entire organisations are running online with staff working from home. American supermarkets are using 360-degree cleaning robots to scrub the floors. South Korean robots are taking body temperature, dispensing hand sanitiser and disinfecting airport floors. Driverless vehicles have been dropping off food to NHS workers in Milton Keynes. The pressure to become Covid-secure is driving wider innovation too. I chair the Commission on Workers and Technology , a two-year inquiry launched by Community union and the Fabian Society, which will report later in the summer. Our evidence shows some changes driven by the current crisis will be vital and valuable helping businesses survive, increasing productivity, making many jobs easier, helping those who want to work from home, and tackling climate change. But crisis-led technological change will also create casualties and greater inequality as people find their jobs replaced or made more precarious when there are fewer new alternative jobs around. Troubling analysis by the commission suggests that many of the workers and communities hit harder by lockdown are also likely to lose out from automation. Many towns that have seen big increases in benefit claimants recently are also those most reliant on the jobs and sectors the ONS has identified as being most at risk from automation. Be it from Covid-19 or from new technology, it is the youngest, oldest and workers with fewest qualifications who are most likely to lose out. As well as short-term hardship, that risks causing long-term scars. Soaring unemployment in the mid-1980s and early 1990s drove deep long-term disadvantage for a generation of school leavers, and for coalfield and manufacturing communities. The government cant sit back and let that happen again. During the financial crisis in 2009, as the Labour governments work and pensions secretary, I launched the future jobs fund to support subsidised jobs across the country part of a guarantee that all young people would get a job or training. It worked creating more than 100,000 jobs with long-term benefits, and getting many more young people into training and education too . This time, in the face of a bigger crisis, ministers must go further. We need a new future jobs fund on a much bigger scale as part of wider government support for the economy. The final report of the Commission on Workers and Technology will call for a jobs guarantee scheme to prevent the scarring effects of long-term unemployment for young and older workers focusing on areas of need such as green technologies. And crucially we need an urgent programme of training guarantees for workers in sectors where jobs arent coming back soon. Building back better means investing in people so they can adapt to future change. The partnerships between government, employers and unions that were so crucial to designing the furlough scheme in the acute phase of the crisis should be at the heart of the response in the chronic recovery phase too, so no one is left behind. Yvette Cooper MP is chair of the Commission on Workers and Technology