Between February and April 2020 we had previously found a substantial increase in those who were not employed and an increase in furloughed workers . We now find that by October 2020 the percentage of people employed is much closer to its February, pre-pandemic level.These results are robust to a number of data checks.
The employment recovery was positively correlated with educational attainment among prime-age adults and young people. Given how much larger the fall in women’s employment was as a result of the initial shock to the labour market, it appears women still remained behind men in terms of reaching their pre-Covid employment levels in October.