Furloughs helping to reduce rise in jobless

UNEMPLOYMENT in Wales has gone up in the three months leading up to February and now stands at 123,000.

One of the reasons this figure isn’t much higher, however, is due to the furlough scheme, also known as the Coronavirus Jobs Retention Scheme.

This pays 80% of the wages of employees whose roles are essentially not operating due to the ongoing pandemic. Some people in Wales have now been on the scheme for more than a year.

Tracey Hurst, 52, works as part of an airline crew on long-haul flights and has now been furloughed for 14 months.

“To be honest when it first started I was sat around a pool in the Middle East and we were hearing all the news coming through and we were trying to work it out,” she said.

“I remember all of us saying it would be about three weeks or a month at the most! It’s just unbelievable it’s still going on.”

Mrs Hurst says it has been a real mixture of emotions.

She said: “In the beginning you think it’s really nice to go to bed at a reasonable time and not have to work through the middle of the night or be on 14-hour flights. It was a bit like a minibreak. But as time has gone on I think it is really difficult because you become a bit isolated. You have got no work around at all and no colleagues. After a month I got quite depressed about it actually because there is no structure. I’ve been doing it for 30 years.

“It’s a big part of your social network just gone. If you go away for five days you are spending that whole time with those people, because we were all based at Heathrow but the rest of your friends are scattered around the UK and Europe.

“Some of my closest friends are in Swindon but I haven’t been able to see them because they have been unable to travel to Wales and I haven’t been able to go into England.”

She adds that it can be hard for people who haven’t been furloughed to understand how isolating it can be.

“Even though I have been off all this time I still have people who say ‘I can’t believe you are on furlough’ and make a joke of it.

“I tell them it’s not funny and it’s really not nice being off work for so long.

“It’s not about the pay. You don’t do a job for 30 years without enjoying it and your job is part of your identity.”

Mrs Hurst has said she has had to start applying for other jobs because she was unsure about what future the airline industry had.”