Uncertain times but opportunities exist

Figures detailing the numbers of workers furloughed across Scotland show the scale of the task ahead in reinvigorating the economy. Across Tayside and Fife more than 85,000 employees are currently having their wages paid by the UK Governmentbacked scheme.

For context, that is a figure significantly greater than the entire economically active workforce of the city of Dundee.

And it does not tell the whole story as there are thousands more self-employed workers whose wages are also currently being propped up by the state and more still who are unemployed and in receipt of benefit payments.

The process to ease lockdown will give some hope to furloughed staff that they will soon be back working.

But that transition will not be straightforward. Workplaces up and down the land – especially those which are directly customer facing – are having to assess what is and is not possible under the Covid-19 guidelines. For many businesses it will be a shocking reality check. And the inevitable consequence of fewer customers, higher costs, lower profitability or the pain of trading at a loss , will mean that for some furloughed staff there may not be a job to come back to.

The furlough scheme is costing billions every month and can only ever be a sticking plaster solution.

Getting Scotland and the UK back to work will not happen overnight. But it must happen.

While the storm clouds are gathered and the bad news continues to pour down, what must not be lost in the doom and gloom is that opportunity still exists to shape a new and dynamic financial future.

In the months and years after the 2008 financial crash, there was a movement towards people taking their employment futures into their own hands.

In a risk-averse society, circumstance fostered a new culuture of entrepreneurialism and boundary breaking.

Those are attributes that will be needed once more as society picks its way through the debris of this terrible pandemic we are currently experiencing.

The economic road ahead will be long and bumpy and, sadly, in many cases it may lead to a dead end.

But, if the impact of Covid-19 is to be minimised, society must come together to keep the wheels turning.