Figures from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) showed that the number of individuals on furlough dropped below 2 million at the end of June, for the first time since the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was introduced in March 2020. HMRC announced that there were 540,000 employers with 1.9 million employees on furlough and this was 590,000 less than the previous month.

However, the government’s contribution is gradually being made less generous as the Chancellor Rishi Sunak prepares to bring the scheme to an end in October and experts fear many thousands will be made redundant as the support tapers off.

In July, the Government support dropped from 80 per cent to 70 per cent and from the beginning of August this was reduced to 60 per cent.

As the Government’s contribution drops, some fear that older workers are more likely to be left on furlough than their younger counterparts - currently one in 10 workers over the age of 65 were still on furlough, the highest of any age group - while younger workers were coming off furlough at a much faster rate.

Out of 250 businesses with employees still on furlough, 18 per cent told the British Chamber of Commerce that having to contribute more to furloughed staff wages meant they were likely to make redundancies.

In response, the British Chamber of Commerce stated that extra training is required to deal with the many thousands of redundancies being predicted and they also raised concerns that some older workers could find it hard to source new employment.

A Government spokesman said:

“We’ve always been clear that it’s not possible to save every job, but our Plan for Jobs is helping people of all ages find the skills they need to get back into work, including thorough the Restart Scheme, the sector-based work academy programme, and our Job Entry Targeted Support scheme.”