Saving the economy will take a lot more work than the furlough scheme

Unless the economy starts growing more swiftly than it is at the moment, any initial bounce will be capped by the rise in unemployment through the autumn, writes Hamish McRae

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is readying a package to boost long-term growth (AFP/Getty)

It is the calm before the storm. A tidal wave of unemployment is about to sweep across the world, leaving behind social and economic misery.

Up to now the challenge has been how to protect jobs in the short term. Some countries, including the UK, have done that better than others. The unemployment figures for April, steady at 3.9 per cent, have been held down by the government-financed furlough scheme, which has close to 9 million people on it. Obviously, that cannot carry on, and employers are now working out how many people they will need through the winter and into next year. The string of job cuts announced by companies that are particularly hard hit – the airlines, the high street retailers, the energy companies and so on – are harbingers of troubling times to come.

Remember, unemployment figures give a rear-view mirror picture of the near past. As Vince Cable points out, the forward-looking data on job hiring look particularly worrying. Unless the economy starts growing more swiftly than it is at the moment, any initial bounce will be capped by the rise in unemployment through the autumn.