11 November
Colin Williams, a public policy professor, shared an article on the likelihood of a million people in the UK planning to give up self-employment because their earnings had been exhausted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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A London School of Economic (LSE) study revealed that the two-decade long trend of people choosing to work for themselves was under threat, much ahead of the release of the official data that was most likely to report a jump in unemployment rates.
The LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) study further found that in August, when economic activities resumed after the first lockdown, about 58% of the UK’s self-employed workforce had less work than earlier.
About one-fifth of the self-employed workers contemplated quitting work altogether, rising to 58% for those below 25 years.
Stephen Machin, co-author of the report and director of CEP stated that self-employment, a key trend in the labour market, was showing early signs of reversing.
The CEP, who surveyed 1,500 self-employed workers, also found that approximately 32% of the surveyed workers had less than ten hours of work every week in August.
