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<p>The Government continues to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on women and men in the labour market; however, the economic evidence of the impact of the pandemic is still emerging and inconclusive.</p><p> </p><p>The Government has provided unprecedented support to protect and support jobs. For claims received up to 31st July 2020, 4.5 million jobs held by women had been supported by the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme since its introduction. The latest data shows that at the end of August, 1.6 million jobs with a female employee were still being supported by the furlough scheme across the UK. In the Plan for Jobs, the Government announced a wide-ranging package of measures to support jobs which will help women across the country, including almost £900m to double the number of work coaches to 27,000 this year and the £2bn Kickstart Scheme, which will create hundreds of thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs for young people (16-24) at risk of long-term unemployment across Great Britain.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Since the Covid-19 outbreak, we know women have seen a smaller fall in employment than men, both in relative and absolute terms. Compared to the quarter ending February 2020, there were 200,000 fewer women employed in the quarter ending September 2020, whereas there were 370,000 fewer men employed. This implies a fall of 1.3% in female employment and 2.1% fall in male employment. The gender employment rate gap is at its lowest level on record at 6.6 percentage points.</p><p> </p><p>Between April 2019 and April 2020, women’s median weekly pay increased by 2.5%, while men’s median weekly pay fell by 0.7%. The gender pay gap is also at its lowest level since records began, falling to a record low of 15.5%, from 17.4% last year.</p> |