This onus is magnified by one of the conditions of the scheme which means employees cannot be made redundant or put on notice of redundancy during the period within which their employer is claiming the grant for that employee.
Therefore, employers face the dilemma now of assessing demand for the forthcoming months for their business and making decisions about the number of employees required now, especially with the current Job Retention Scheme ending 31 October.
Sadly, it does not appear the Job Support Scheme will avoid a swathe of redundancies over the coming months as employers seek to manage their cashflows to survive the winter months.
This will be most acutely felt in the hospitality, leisure and tourism sectors and likely to lead to widespread job losses in the young with the age group of 16-24 most likely to be employed in these sectors and so the greatest effected age bracket.
JSS grant payments will be made monthly in arrears commencing in December, reimbursing the employer for the government’s contribution. The grant will not cover Class 1 employer NICs or pension contributions, although these contributions will remain payable by the employer.
This means that the overall cost of employment for employers is higher than simply their contribution to employee salaries.
An unexpected silver lining to the scheme is that employers using the Job Support Scheme will also be able to claim the Job Retention Bonus if they meet the eligibility criteria.
This is a payment of £1,000 for every employee previously furloughed who remain employed continuously until 31 January 2021. These payments will be made to the employer in February 2021.
For those that are self-employed there was also an extension to the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme. As with the JSS the schemes eligibility criteria remained the same, but the amounts received reduced to 20 per cent of average monthly income.
The extended SEISS will run for the six months from 1 November through to 30 April with the grant payments made in two tranches each representing three months.
The disparity in impact for the self-employed is significant with those in the arts often having no income while those in other sectors still trading but at reduced levels.
This extension for those in the arts with no income will be woefully inadequate and targeted sector support needs to be considered.
The above measures tweaked and extended existing support measures but did not address any of the inherent unfairness of the previous support measures.
A large proportion of the workforce are not captured by either measure but have suffered equally during the pandemic.
