Spike in economic inactivity was unexpected after the pandemic – Bailey

The Bank of England governor said experts had tipped a jump in unemployment as furlough ended in September 2021.

Andrew Bailey said the end of furlough in September 2021 had been expected to bring a jump in unemployment (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Wire)

The governor of the Bank of England has said the impact when the UK came out of the Covid-19 pandemic was “different” to what many experts had predicted ahead of time.

Andrew Bailey said the end of furlough in September 2021 had been expected to bring a jump in unemployment as businesses hit by the pandemic struggled to keep their staff on payrolls.

Instead, since the pandemic the labour market has been tight as hundreds of thousands of workers ruled themselves out of the labour force.