A report by the Global Central Bankers Club found that large government handouts during the pandemic have made many workers reluctant to return to work.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said labor force “participation rates” in some countries, including the UK, had not yet recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels.
He added that “workers’ preferences are changing in favor of shorter working hours.”
While the struggle to get employees back to work was partly due to health reasons, the report also found that “participants recovered more slowly in regions that received greater pandemic-related financial support.”
It added that the decline in the number of people able to work could also be caused by the aging of the population.
In the UK, the latest official figures show the rate of economic shutdown, which includes people not working or looking for work, remains higher than pre-COVID-19 levels. .
The BIS report, which is owned by member central banks, suggests that the generosity of the UK’s £70bn furlough scheme during the pandemic may be partly to blame.
Between March 2020 and September 2021, the taxpayer-funded scheme paid up to 80% of wages to those furloughed due to the lockdown.
A total of 11.7 million jobs were furloughed. There are currently nearly 1 million vacancies in the business sector, and ministers are trying to get more people back into the workforce.
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Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt admitted at a think tank event yesterday that the government is trying to tackle the problem through benefit reform.
He compared Britain’s participation rate unfavorably with the Netherlands.
“Relative to our population size, if we had the same number of women working in the UK as in the Netherlands, we would have two million more people working in the UK, filling every vacancy in the economy more than twice as much,” he said. Said.
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