Planned redundancies down by a fifth as firms spooked by pandemic’s impact on labour shortages
Firms are putting off planned redundancies despite rising business rates and inflation, after being spooked by the pandemic’s impact creating severe staff shortages.
The number of redundancies has fallen by 21 per cent from in the last quarter according to law firm GQ|Littler.
The figures show it dropped from 50,382 to 39,669 up to the end of June, with severe staff shortages after the pandemic making some businesses more reluctant to lay off workers.
It comes as a surprise with a poor economic outlook and the possibility of recession, with firms facing rising business rates and inflation eating into margins.
GQ|Littler’s Philip Cameron said that firms had been bucking the trend, whereby “traditionally a squeeze on margins, such as the one being created by the spike in inflation we would see businesses reducing costs through redundancy.”
He said “the extreme shortage of available staff across the economy” however means many firms are “retaining underemployed staff rather than making them redundant.”
“They are concerned that when the economic outlook starts to look better they wont be able to rehire those staff. Many employers will have learned this the hard way following the pandemic”