6.3 million jobs furloughed that is nearly 1 in 4 of all paid UK employments - 23% of 27.8m jobs, now paid for by the Government - average payout per job is £1,269:
Universal credit claimants up 1.8 million since lockdown, reports DWP too - so that is the Government newly supporting over 8 million incomes since pandemic/ shutdowns ... (possibly some overlap, and jobs vs people issue). That’s before the self employment scheme...
interesting to think of counter factual - without Furlough scheme, universal credit number would have rocketed instead by many millions more...
Govt decided to deploy a form of insurance through employers rather than DWP..
Difficult to see how this structure now gets uninvented
Govt decided to deploy a form of insurance through employers rather than DWP..
Difficult to see how this structure now gets uninvented
*On those furlough costings- the £8bn and the average £1269 relate to monthly claims - so the total cost still might be in line to hit OBR estimates (£49bn gross, £39bn after tax paid) as claims rise and then they get renewed until end June (at least)
For context - Germany’s Kurzarbeit scheme which is more flexible (based on hours cut), less generous (60%) but not taxed and is a century or so old... has seen 751k applications for 10.1 million employees so far... this compares to 3m in Great Recession 2009...which saved 1m jobs
Treasury have circulated a quote the Chancellor gave to @ITVJoel on this furlough scheme stressing “there will be no cliff edge” but clearly signalling that spending “as much on the furlough scheme as we do on the NHS” (ie £10bn a month) is “clearly not a sustainable situation” 
So work is going on to wind down the furlough scheme “in a measured way” - which is not what for example the aviation industry was asking for last week - a further extension
