Authors
Summary
The self-employed accounted for 15% of the UK workforce in 2019 and many of these worked in sectors particularly at risk in this unprecedent crisis (ONS, 2020a). Compared to most other European countries, the level and previous increase in self-employment in the UK makes for an exceptional case (Hatfield, 2015), and this makes the monitoring of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on self-employment particularly important for UK economic and social policy. This summary provides the first findings of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the self-employed during the first two months of the lockdown. This analysis focuses on what happened to the self-employed in terms of loss in employment/jobs, reduction in working hours and earnings, and how this plays out across different industries, regions and social groups. We do not here investigate the potential impact of the UK Government’s Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS), hastily announced in April 2020 once the potential impact of lockdown on the self-employed became apparent. This is because claims under the first round of the scheme remained open until mid-July 2020 and most payments made from this scheme did not start to arrive until after the analysis period in this report.