The coronavirus has produced a once-in-a-generation economic challenge, threatening business and employment across every sector of the economy. In response, countries across the world have implemented policies of state support to allow companies to maintain employees, even if they cannot work due to lockdown restrictions.

This Reform Ideas sets the UK’s Job Retention Scheme against comparable countries’ programmes of support and, while initially successful, outlines how the scheme can adopt measures already in place elsewhere to make it more flexible and allow for support to distributed more fairly across the economy.