Region hit as jobs in hospitality are lost

THE South West is likely to have been hardest-hit by coronavirusrelated job losses because so many people work in the hospitality industry, writes William Telford.

Analysis from the work tech company Orka shows that the region, where 10% of people were employed in the food and hospitality sectors before the pandemic struck, has seen unemployment rise by 0.7 percentage points.

Latest Government statistics show 9.6% of people in the South West work in the hard-hit food and accommodation service sector, higher than the UK average of 7.3%.

The unemployment rate in the South West was 3.1% over the months of January to March 2020, one of the lowest levels across the UK. But this figure had jumped to 3.8% in the latest jobs data released in September, with 20,000 more people now officially seeking work.

The restaurant and hospitality industries were dealt a hammer blow in March as lockdown was implemented and tens of thousands of job cuts have followed.

Orka looked at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) most recent Business Register and Employment Survey, alongside jobs figures published in September, which showed the UK’s unemployment rate had reached its highest level in two years.

The South East and the East Midlands have fared similarly badly, both seeing their unemployment rates jump by 0.6 percentage points, to 3.5% and 4.4% respectively.

The East Midlands is likely to have felt the impact of significant job cuts in the manufacturing sector, given that the industry previously employed 12.4% of its workforce, a considerably higher proportion than anywhere else in the UK.

The Orka analysis also reveals that some UK regions have actually seen their unemployment rates fall in the past five months, with the West Midlands dropping 0.6 percentage points to 4.4% and the North West dropping 0.5 percentage points to 3.5%.

The West Midlands has a lower than average percentage of workers in hospitality, food and retail, potentially explaining the region’s resilience to Covid job losses.

Both regions are also home are two of the UK’s biggest cities in Manchester and Birmingham, with growing digital economies and a high proportion of office jobs potentially helping the regions to weather the storm.

Tom Pickersgill, chief executive and co-founder of Orka, said: “The jobs market has been turned on its head in the last six months, but the story is not the same in every industry and from looking at the data, there are clearly a lot of companies still hiring.”