More than half of all British workers have made sacrifices to protect jobs this year, ranging from pay freezes to unpaid overtime, according to insolvency experts.
The most common compromise made was longer hours and unpaid overtime, with 28pc of workers agreeing to that, according to R3, the insolvency trade body. A further 15pc accepted a pay freeze, while 7pc took a pay cut.
Other changes to work patterns included unpaid leave, which was taken by 14pc of those questioned, while 4pc took voluntary redundancy, according to the research carried out by GfK NOP. Some workers said they had not asked for a pay rise specifically because of the recession, or did not receive a bonus that they would otherwise have expected to receive.
Overall, 53pc of workers have made at least one of those sacrifices in the past year.
“No one jumps for joy at a pay cut, but short-term sacrifices like this can be vital in helping companies through a tough patch and preserving jobs,” said Peter Sargent, president of R3. “Unemployment and insolvencies are both high, but they would be even higher without the changes to work patterns we’ve seen this year.”
According to R3, there were 14,705 liquidations in the first nine months of the year, fewer than in previous recessions. In the early 1990s, liquidations peaked at 24,425 in 1992.
Unemployment during this recession has grown at a slower rate than expected, which is widely believed to be the result of the more flexible nature of the labour market, with employers using measures such as pay freezes to limit redundancies.
The latest data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Wednesday are expected to show that the rise in the number of jobless is flattening out. Total UK unemployment was 2.46m in September.
The ONS said yesterday that unemployment during the recession has risen most among 16 to 24 year-olds than any other age group. The jobless rate among 16 and 17 year-olds has jumped by 8.1 percentage points to 32.4pc, and by 5.8 percentage points to 18pc among 18 to 24 year-olds. That compares with an increase in the overall unemployment rate of 2.6 percentage points to 7.8pc.
“As younger people are more reliant on graduate and other entry-level recruitment schemes, their employment prospects are likely to be more sensitive to the prevailing low vacancy rate,” the ONS said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/
