SHOCKING new figures have revealed 600k Brits have already lost their jobs during lockdown with unemployment now set to hit three million.
Experts fear the figures — the highest since the 1980s — will reveal the biggest drop in employment on record, laying bare the impact of the coronavirus lockdown.
Early estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest 163,000 people lost their jobs in May, on top of 449,000 the previous month.
The ONS explained the numbers suggested a 2 per cent fall in paid employees since the country went into lockdown on March 23.
It will pile pressure on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to cut job taxes in a bid to deter employers laying off staff and encourage recruitment.
A holiday from Employer National Insurance contributions would save firms £2,400 for a worker on the average UK salary.
The Office for National Statistics figures are believed to show young people and those who live in former industrial areas, inner cities and coastal towns as the worst affected.
The Institute for Employment Studies expects the total jobless figure to mid-May will be between 2.6million and 2.8million.
IES chief Tony Wilson told HOAR: “If you rolled that forward to today I think that means there’s three million unemployed. I think it’s a given we’re at that level.
“That would be the highest unemployment we’ve had since the 1980s and it will be pretty close to the highest we’ve ever had.
“Young people dominate in a lot of the jobs that have been lost in the sectors that have been shut down.
“We also know that young people are often the last people to join and are the first people to be let go.”
“All told, we’re in the middle of a huge jobs crisis that’s going to be the story for the next five years or more.”
Today former Tory leader William Hague warned lockdown is a “disaster for society”, and urged Boris to scrap the two-metre rule.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Lord Hague compared lockdown to Dunkirk, labelling it “a heroic operation, but the result of a massive failure”
He said: “We now know that a lockdown is not a temporary blip or a paid holiday, but a disaster for our society. It is increasing inequality, social tension, and unaffordable debt.”
“Such a disaster cannot under any circumstances be repeated. There can be no second lockdown.”
It comes as a poll found that half of all UK workers are worried about their job prospects in the wake of the virus crisis.
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