In the report, launched on Wednesday (8 April), the IES also calls on government to adopt a five-point plan including the creation of a ‘Cobra’ group for jobs in the wake of a rise in the unemployment rate to 2.5m, or from 3.9% to 7.5% of the workforce. That is double the fall of employment in the last recession and five times larger than the previous largest quarterly fall at any point since 1971.

“This will be a far quicker rise than in any of our last three recessions, and would put the unemployment rate slightly higher already than the highest point it reached in the last recession,” an IES statement said.

“What is less clear… is whether unemployment will continue to rise steeply in the coming months, and how fast the recovery will be,” the statement went on to say.

“Overall, we think that it is highly unlikely that we will see a steep recovery in employment or unemployment in the near future, and we expect that it will take years rather than months for the labour market to fully recover.”

The five-point plan proposed by the IES is: 

1. Investment in new active labour programmes for those out of work
2. Refocusing skills and training to support the recovery
3. An integrated and coherent offer for young people
4. An orderly withdrawal from the Job Retention Scheme
5. A new, partnership-based ‘Back to Work’ campaign

IES institute director Tony Wilson said: “In order to be ready to act in the months ahead, we need to act now. However, the sheer scale of the challenge means that government will not be able to do this by itself.

“We recommend that government brings together a ‘Cobra’ for jobs, to work together on designing, co-ordinating and mobilising this response, and convening a wide range of partners including government departments and agencies, local government, sector bodies, trusts and foundations, and key stakeholders.

“The proposals will help to ensure that as the economy recovers we can keep people attached to work, help them find better work, and minimise the ‘scars’ from being out of work.

“With a cost of around £4.7bn over the next three years, the evidence from previous programmes tells us that this investment would more than pay for itself in the future; while the evidence from previous recessions tells us that the costs of inaction would be far higher.”

The Institute for Employment Studies is an independent, not-for-profit centre for research and evidence-based consultancy on employment, the labour market and HR policy and practice.

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