A massive unemployment wave is expected in the United Kingdom. According to a survey conducted among 2,000 companies, almost a third of UK business intends to lay off employees in the third quarter of this year. Employers are forced to take such measures as the British authorities have abandoned their previous plan of providing employees with unpaid leaves. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, or CIPD, estimated that the total number of British companies which were preparing to cut workforce had reached 33%. Previously, this reading was around 22%. So far, the United Kingdom has successfully responded to labor market challenges. The percentage of job cuts was relatively small under the job retention scheme. However, the British government is now trying to wind it up. Consequently, a wave of redundancies is expected to sweep over the country already in August. The private sector will bear the brunt of job losses. Around 40% of businesses in the UK have already confirmed their intention to reduce the number of staff in their companies. At the same time, the employment rate in the country increased as well. Around a half of the companies surveyed expressed willingness to expand their workforce in the next three months compared to the previous reading of 40%. Nevertheless, employment confidence plunged to the lowest level on record.The least confident in the future are employees and employers of the hospitality, retail, and transportation sectors.The situation is even more complicated with salary growth. Those employers who are ready to increase salary can do it by no more than 1%, while the figure for the same period last year was 2%. In addition, a substantial number of private sector companies are going to keep payments unchanged till things go better. They make up about two-fifths of the total number of the companies surveyed.
