Furloughing has saved 374,000 jobs in Scotland
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About 374,000 redundancies in Scotland have been avoided thanks to the Job Retention Scheme.
That's according to a survey commissioned by the CIPD, the professional body for Human Resources.
The survey questioned a sample of Scottish employers.
It found that 58% have furloughed their staff.
Of those questioned, 34% said that, in the absence of the Job Retention Scheme, they would have made their workforce redundant.
This equates to about 374,000 people in Scotland losing their jobs, according to the CIPD.
The Job Retention Scheme has seen 6.3 million workers across the whole UK receive up to 80 per cent of their salaries from the Government – at a cost of £8bn to the Treasury.
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of Exchequer, has announced intentions to start scaling back the scheme from July.
However, the CIPD has warned that changes to the scheme will be required to avoid permanent redundancies in the future.
Over half of employers (56%) believe an extension for a further three months, until September, would be the most helpful change in dealing with the impacts of Covid-19.
The same survey found 60% of employers said they would like the JRS to be made more flexible to allow short-time working.
Lee Ann Panglea, head of CIPD Scotland and Northern Ireland, commented: "This survey very clearly shows the importance of the Government’s intervention, with over 374,000 redundancies prevented as a direct result of the Job Retention Scheme.
"That being said, to prevent permanent redundancies, the Government needs to look ahead and consider changes to the support it is providing to businesses.
"Our survey shows Scottish employers back both an extension to the Job Retention Scheme and increased flexibility to allow some short-time working, enabling organisations to bring back workers from furlough gradually while rebuilding their business.
"This will become increasingly important as we look towards the next phase of this crisis, and will help avoid the current scheme simply becoming a waiting room for unemployment."
MSP Jamie Halcro Johnston, whose constituency includes Moray, said: "By being able to furlough their workers, businesses have been able to put themselves on a sounder financial footing that would otherwise have been the case.
"As well as protecting household incomes, it also makes it much more likely that the jobs will still be there when the restrictions are eventually relaxed and we return to some kind of normality.
"The strength and diversity of the UK’s economy is proving to be a vital asset which the Chancellor is rightly drawing on to help get all parts of the United Kingdom through this emergency.
"It’s still too early to say what the economic consequences of the pandemic will be, but the Job Retention Scheme will have played a crucial part in mitigating the inevitable damage."
