Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill 2024-25: Progress of the bill
An overview of the progress of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill through the House of Commons prior to report stage.

This is the final version of this paper which tracks the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the labour market from January-March 2020 to January-March 2022.
Coronavirus: Impact on the labour market (2 MB , PDF)
A summary of the latest labour market statistics is available in the Library paper, UK Labour Market Statistics.
The beginning of the pandemic along with the first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020 had a dramatic effect on the labour market. There was a large fall in employment, while unemployment and economic inactivity (people not in work and not looking for work) both rose.
The number of people in work fell by 825,000 people between January-March 2020 and October-December 2020, while unemployment rose by almost 400,000 and the number of people who were economically inactive rose by 327,000.
Redundancies reached record highs while UK working hours dropped to the lowest since 1994.The number of people claiming unemployment benefits doubled between March and May 2020.
By the start of 2021, employment and unemployment levels began to improve but economic inactivity continued to grow, peaking in December 2021-February 2022 at 8.89 million, nearly 450,000 more than in January-March 2020.
This means that two years after the start of the pandemic, employment levels were still around 350,000 lower than they had been before it began. This was despite unemployment falling below pre-pandemic levels.
In January-March 2022, redundancies were below pre-pandemic levels, and job vacancies were at record highs.
Over 11.7 million jobs were furloughed in total on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). The number of jobs on furlough peaked on 8 May 2020, when 8.9 million jobs were on furlough. When the scheme ended on 30 September 2021 1.2 million jobs were still on furlough, but this did not coincide with a large jump in unemployment.
1.3 million claims were made to the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS), which also ended on 30 September 2021.
Some workers were disproportionally economically impacted by the pandemic.
Coronavirus: Impact on the labour market (2 MB , PDF)
An overview of the progress of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill through the House of Commons prior to report stage.
Unemployment data tells us about the strength of the labour market. Find the latest data on UK unemployment levels and rates.
Employment data tells us about the strength of the labour market. Find the latest data on UK employment levels and rates.