Long Covid keeping 110,000 people off work in blow to economy

LONG Covid has left 110,000 people out of work, a think tank has found.

Lingering cases of the virus have forced thousands to take sick leave or quit their jobs altogether, harming their personal finances and worsening the skills shortage blighting the economic recovery.

One in 10 of the two million people with long Covid have taken time off work, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), with 110,000 missing from the workplace at any one time.

Tom Waters, an economist at the IFS, said the scale of the problem was large enough to have “a meaningful effect” on the entire jobs market and the wider economy.

“The unemployment level is pretty low, it is about 1.3million people, so compared to that [110,000] is fairly sizable,” he said.

Companies are already struggling to fill their advertised vacancies, so another 110,000 missing staff puts businesses under growing pressure.

“As long as long Covid rates continue around the level they are, this is an ongoing, perpetual effect,” said Mr Waters.

Typically sufferers report long Covid for up to six months after they are first infected.

With coronavirus still in circulation, the condition is likely to continue to affect the workforce for the foreseeable future.

Businesses “have to respond by hiring more staff or simply producing less as there are not many workers on hand, so that could feed through a bit into inflation,” said Mr Waters.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show 8.75million people of working age are “economically inactive”, meaning they are neither in work nor looking for employment. This has risen by almost 400,000 since the pandemic began.

Of these, 2.3million said they were long-term sick, up by more than 200,000 since February 2020.

The extra 110,000 identified by the IFS largely come on top of these figures, as they are people who still have their jobs but are on sick leave.

As well as hurting the wider economy, long Covid also deals a painful blow to the finances of those who suffer from it. “Our research suggests that for a significant minority of long Covid sufferers, the condition has severe effects not only on their health but on their ability to do paid work,” said Mr Waters.

“The rising rate of long Covid could therefore put additional strain on families during the cost of living crisis, especially as long Covid is more common among poorer families, as well as dragging on a struggling economy.”

The IFS estimates that the typical person who drops out of work owing to long Covid loses income amounting to about £1,100 per month, a serious hit when prices have jumped by more than 9 per cent over the past year.

Across the nation’s households overall, this translates to almost £1.5billion of lost earnings per year.

The warning comes as the Recruitment and Employment Confederation found confidence among employers is dropping at its fastest rate since the early months of the pandemic in 2020.

Companies are still trying to take on more staff, but rising inflation is undermining their faith in the strength of the economy.