Millions still furloughed as commuters abandon the office again

More than one in 10 employees is still on furlough even as the scheme enters its final weeks, meaning more than two million workers face a question mark over their jobs at the end of the month.

Businesses said 11pc of their staff were on full or partial furlough in the days up to Sept 20, according to the Office for National Statistics.

At the same time more workers are staying at home instead of commuting, indicating an important part of the reopening of the economy, including city centres, is going into reverse.

When the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) was launched, it was hoped that the pandemic would be over by now and the economy well on track to recovering.

GDP has mounted a significant recovery, but the pandemic is not over and rising cases mean more workers are following the latest advice to work from home.

Almost one-quarter worked exclusively from home in the final week of September, the highest share since the start of August.

Meanwhile the number who travelled to work at least once fell to 59pc, from 64pc the previous week.

Economist Robert Wood at Bank of America said the revival of the virus combined with the end of the furlough scheme, which will be replaced with a less generous Job Support Scheme next month, will hit the economy hard.

“We expect unemployment to double as the government replaces the successful furlough scheme with a short-time working scheme that has limited incentives,” he said.

“Easing lockdown led to Covid cases rising once more, so we now need to factor in tighter restrictions on activity. Almost one-quarter of the UK population are under enhanced local restriction measures. Brexit uncertainty has risen too.

“We expect the economy to stall in the final quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021.”

However there are still some signs of recovery.

Online job adverts increased to 59pc of their 2019 level, up from 55pc previously. This is the highest level since April, indicating that recruitment is gradually improving.

At the lowest point in May, during lockdown, there were just 35pc of the usual level of job vacancies advertised online.