In the first half of this year, employers in the UK announced at least 240,000 redundancies. Now, based on government statistics, independent think-tank the Institute for Employment Studies has predicted that nearly 450,000 more redundancies might take place in the third quarter. And the actual total might possibly hit 700,000 or even more because the official figures on which the analysis are based do not include redundancies by employers cutting 20 or fewer jobs.

The last time the UK saw such a surge in redundancies was during the 2009 recession, when the global financial crisis hit. But even then, the largest number of jobs lost in a single quarter was around 305,000, far below the most optimistic estimates for the present day.

"Comparing what is happening now with what was happening in the last recession shows us we are experiencing a jobs crisis unlike anything we have seen before," said Tony Wilson, Director of the IES. Calling for support for both businesses and affected workers, he pointed out that some of the job losses were due to businesses being unable to bring employees back despite being viable, because of the pandemic disruption. "So we need tightly targeted support to help these firms ride out the next few months, where they can commit to not laying staff off."

On top of this, the IES is also estimating a further 205,000 redundancies in Q4, after the government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme ends—meaning that by the end of 2020, a million jobs may have been lost across the country. This number does not include temporary furloughs and reductions in hours and pay. If those are included, a total of 7.6 million jobs, or 24 percent of the UK workforce, are either at risk or have already suffered, according to a May study by McKinsey. The McKinsey study also pointed out that low-income locations and occupations are disproportionately affected.

The government is under considerable pressure to extend its job support scheme, but whether it has the financial reserves to do so is still in question.