This is the 63rd of a series of bulletins produced by ISE to update members on key data and policy relating to Covid-19. This bulletin covers the period 17th September – 30th September 2021.

You can access all of the Covid-19 bulletins on ISE insights.

Latest COVID-19 data and news

Source: Government Covid-19 dashboard.

Please note September figures only include data until 24/09/21 for hospital admissions and 28/09/21 for cases and deaths.

The UK has now had over 7.7m identified Covid-19 cases and 158.7k deaths (with Covid on the death certificate) in total.

The following graph shows the average daily number of Covid-19 cases over the last 6 weeks. An interactive version of this graph that allows you to view average daily admissions and death rates is available here.

Source: Government Covid-19 dashboard.

Please note, hospital admissions data is currently only available up to 24/09/21 so the average daily hospital admission rate for the most recent week is based on data from 20/09/21 – 24/09/21.

In the last six weeks, figures for Covid-19 cases, deaths and hospital admissions have remained broadly stable. However, in the last couple of weeks, there appears to have been a downward trend in Covid-19 related hospital admissions.

Source: Government Covid-19 dashboard.

82.4% of the UK population of over 16s are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, with another 7.3% having had one dose. One dose of a vaccine is now being offered to healthy children between 12 and 15. A third booster dose has also started being rolled out to the over-50s and younger adults with certain health conditions, beginning with the most vulnerable. There is currently no vaccine approved for use in under-12s.

• Government announces winter Covid plan, with Plan A including further vaccinations, testing, border control and financial support to the NHS. If this is insufficient, advice to work from home and mandatory mask wearing will be re-introduced and vaccine passports may be considered.
• Changes have been made to the rules for international travel – the traffic light system has been replaced by a single red list of countries, which still require passengers to stay in a quarantine hotel. Fully vaccinated passengers arriving into the UK from non-red countries do not have to isolate and can now use cheaper lateral flow tests for their Day 2 test. These changes come into place on 4^th October 2021.

Education

• Record number of absences seen as more than 100,000 pupils in England miss school due to confirmed or suspected infections in one week.
• Call for overhaul of A-Levels and ‘broadening’ of post-16 education after Government encouragement to take STEM courses led to the number of students taking humanities subjects dropping by 40,000 in 10 years.
• Keir Starmer pledges to prepare school leavers for work and life by adding practical skills, such as pensions and credit scores, to the curriculum.
• Reports from the University of York suggest an encouraging rate of vaccine uptake in students.
• Graduates to start repaying student loans at lower earning threshold.
• IFF’s Catherine Turner has developed the Graduate Index, which uses seven social and personal measures to evaluate graduate success.

Economy

• UK inflation expected to rise above 4% by the end of the year, due to rising energy costs, with signs that the supply chain crisis is likely to affect economic recovery.
• Economic expert warns of the likelihood of a difficult winter ahead.

Labour market

The number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) had been relatively stable since 2017, however a reduction has been observed within the last year – as shown in the following chart.

Source: Young People NEET government dataset

Unemployment measures people without a job who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks.

Economic inactivity describes those not in the labour force that are not seeking work or able to start work in the next two weeks.

An interactive version of this graph which allows you to explore NEET levels by gender and age is available here.

• Unemployment rates fell to 4.65% in the last quarter due to a record August for hiring, with 241,000 employees added to payrolls.
• There is currently a strong labour demand with one million UK job vacancies – industries with the highest levels of vacancies include manufacturing, construction, transport and storage, hospitality, health, education, IT and administration.
• Economists believe that the end of the UK’s furlough scheme, which still sees 1.6m fully or partially furloughed, may help but will not fix labour shortages.
• Charlie Ball summarises recent data and reports from the graduate labour market.

Changing patterns of work

• A BBC survey suggests that most office-workers will never return to working in the office full-time. Some senior leaders believe this will adversely affect creativity and collaboration but most managers and members of the general public disagreed.
• Bryan Lufkin gives his views on the future of work and suggests that employees may start to turn against hybrid working due to perceived impacts on their career development and lack of interaction with colleagues.
• Government to make flexible working the default – employees will have the right to request this as soon as they start a job, and employers will need to provide suitable reasoning if refusing.

Student recruitment and development

• Graduates securing a job fell by a third this year after being forced to compete with the ‘Class of 2020’.
• Jessica Grundy, Head of Early Talent Recruitment Strategy at J&J, shares the recruitment lessons learned during Covid-19.
• ISE’s Tristram Hooley investigates the issue of cheating within graduate recruitment, and outlines strategies taken to prevent it.
• David Kernohan discusses whether graduates should relocate for better salaries and career prospects.