A record 11,120 household-name retail outlets and around 125,000 store jobs were lost after the first lockdown supercharged a move away from high streets.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, with fears the job loss total at shops, pubs and restaurants could soar as new lockdowns are rolled out this winter.
London, Essex and York were placed into Tier Two at the weekend, joining areas including Birmingham and Manchester, while Liverpool and Lancashire are already in the most stringent Tier Three.
Hospitality industry leaders say that as many as 750,000 jobs could go in their sector alone by early next year – and a total of 255,000 retail jobs could be lost by the end of 2020.
Kay Neufeld, of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said it was ‘plausible’ that there could be more than one million job losses in the retail and hospitality sectors alone.
