LONDON (UK) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is seeking to do away with a full national lockdown so that it wouldn’t leave millions into unemployment, Environment Secretary George Eustice said on Thursday.
Eustice told Sky, “I’ve not seen any projections of 4 million but certainly we know that there are some 700,000 extra people that are already unemployed as a result of this, and yes you know the projections are, that there are going to be economic impacts.”
“It’s for precisely that reason that we are trying to avoid full lockdown,” he said.
Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that unemployment would soar to 11.9% in the final quarter of 2020 under its central economic scenario.
Going by a more negative scenario, unemployment would come up to an average 4 million through 2021.
The Bank of England has forecast that unemployment will rise to around 2.5 million by the end of this year.