CJRS and SEISS - latest statistics released
21 August 2020
HMRC has released a third set of official statistics on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) which provide an analysis of claims for the periods up to 30 June 2020 – the last date prior to the introduction of flexible furloughing. Data has been gathered using information that had been submitted to HMRC by 31 July which was the final date that CJRS claims would have been accepted up to 30 June 2020.
The key points within this release are:
- An additional 228,000 employments have been claimed for under CJRS since the July CJRS statistics were released
- In total, 9.6 million employments have been furloughed through CJRS (32% of eligible employments) for at least part of the period between March and June. These claims have been made by 1.16 million employers, with 61% of eligible employers claiming
- 73% of employers with more than 250 employments have made at least one claim, but have furloughed 21% of their employments
- The accommodation and food services sector has had the highest furlough rate of 77%
- The wholesale and retail sector furloughed the highest number of employments, at over 1.9 million
- There has been broad consistency in furlough rates across the nations of the UK. The West Midlands region of England has the highest take-up rate of 34% against the UK average of 32%
- Men have been furloughed at a higher rate than women: 34% and 29% respectively
- The number of employments furloughed peaked at 8.9 million on 8 May, then reduced to 6.8 million by 30 June. This peak is lower than the 9.6 million mentioned above since furloughed staff have been furloughed for different periods (and not all at the same time)
The full and detailed release can be found here.
In addition, HMRC has also released statistics in relation to claims made under the Self-Employment Income Support Schemes (SEISS) up to 31 July. This has been named as Experimental Statistics, as the methods used to compile the data are still in a development stage, meaning that the data produced is subject to revision.
The main findings of this review are:
- Around 5 million individuals reported self-employment income for the tax year 2018 to 2019, and had their data assessed for potential SEISS eligibility. To be assessed, a self-employed individual needed to have traded in the tax year 2018 to 2019 and submitted a Self-Assessment tax return on or before 23 April 2020 for that year
- Via this process, 3.4 million self-employed individuals were identified as potentially eligible for the SEISS scheme. This means that they met the criteria for the scheme based on Self-Assessment returns from 2018 to 2019 and earlier years. However, some of the potentially eligible businesses will not have been adversely affected by coronavirus or have ceased trading since 2018 to 2019 so will not have been eligible
- By 31 July, 2.6 million (77%) of the potentially eligible population had claimed a SEISS grant with the value of these claims totalling £7.6 billion. This compares to 2.55 million claims made and £7.4 billion claimed by 30 June, as published in the statistics in July
- The average value per claim was £2,900
- Around two-thirds of the potentially eligible population are male (2.3 million).
- A lower proportion of potentially eligible females have claimed a SEISS grant (71%) compared to males (79%)
- The average claim for females is also lower at £2,300 compared to the average claim for males of £3,200
- Around 90% of claimants are aged between 25 and 64 and take-up of the grant in those age groups is at or above 76% - no one age group dominates, and claims are evenly spread
- The sector with the highest number of potentially eligible individuals and the highest proportion of claims is the construction industry. By 31 July, construction workers had made 884,000 claims for SEISS totalling £3.1 billion
- The two regions with the highest number of claims are London (498,000) and the South East (379,000), reflecting their relative sizes
- Of the 1.6 million that did not meet the SEISS criteria, 1.4 million (88%) had trading profits less than non-trading profits (for example income from employment or investment income), 0.5 million (33%) had trading profits of £0 or made a loss and 0.2 million (11%) had trading profits over £50,000 (Note - Individuals may be counted more than once if they have trading profits which meet more than one of these criteria which explains why the figures sum to more than 1.6 million)
Full details of this review can be found here.
Information provided in this news article may be subject to change. Please make note of the date of publication to ensure that you are viewing up to date information.