The unemployment rate is increasing, forcing the Government to implement new changes to protect the economy

The world started reacting to the news about the Coronavirus at the beginning of March and immediately started coming up with solutions to solve the issue. While different countries picked varying approaches, one thing was for certain borders around the world were being shut down, and there were some restrictions on travel. The UK was affected by the pandemic harder than most other countries, with the Prime Minister sent to the hospital for a significant amount of time after catching it.

Many countries immediately implemented a nationwide lockdown so they could contain the situation and reduce the spread of the virus. There were many challenges with the process and people who were travelling at the time found themselves stranded in other countries.

Additionally, there were issues with businesses and companies finding it difficult to meet their targets, causing them to let a lot of their staff go. Unemployment in the UK immediately turned unstable. The Government stepped in with their furlough scheme to assist companies by paying a large percentage of the salaries, while they only had to pay the difference.

While Government schemes assisted the economy to a large extent and did reduce unemployment to some degree, the Government could not have them running forever, and made changes to them, wrapping up the furlough scheme in October. They mentioned creating another plan, but it would not protect the entire country as well as the furlough did. Overall, a lot of the company getting through the furlough were letting go of large numbers of their staff, which meant the scheme was not as beneficial as they wanted it to be. They stated that companies would have to learn to support themselves, if the Government wanted to benefit the economy and bailouts, although, essential at some points in time could not last forever.

According to queues at unemployment centres, there were about three million people out of work in the UK. A large number of these people were not planning on getting into the job market yet since they were waiting for businesses to get better established, and the economy to improve

a little. The unemployment rate that stood at 3.9% for the longest time finally increasing further to 4.5% in October, which was a lot better than the predictions that stated that they should have been higher than 5%.

Everything is not gloomy, since the Government is making changes to assist companies currently in the UK. They are slowly opening up the economy and making sure that the people moving around are following the rules put in place to protect them. People heading out had to wear masks, sanitise themselves, and venues have to make sure they were maintaining the right amount of social distance. Smaller businesses were opening up, and people were heading out following the rules. The Government even learned that it didn’t make a lot of sense for them to shut down the country again, after measuring the pros and cons, it caused more damage than solving anything. When the country was hir by the second wave of the pandemic, the Government mentioned that they were going to shut and open different parts of the country depending on the number of people infected in that area instead of shutting evberthing down, which didn’t make sense.

Employers were making changes when they were bringing people into the fold since they wanted to be sure they were a right fit for the company. Background checks were the new normal, and almost all companies wanted to get through them since they were not sure about the people they were hiring since they were not meeting them in person. Most of the interviews were taking place remotely, on video conferencing tools, which made getting to know the team,

challenging. The most common system used for a background check is the D BS check since it

allowed people to review the D BS certificate online, which made it the most convenient approach

that they could take. It provided information about criminal records, if any, and also additional information on the age group of people the applicant was open to spending time with since some of them did not want to spend time with children or older people. In many cases, this information was relevant to the people they were hiring and the job description.