UK Retailers Seek £2.9 Billion Job-Rules Relief to Protect 780,000 Youth Roles
Updated
Updated · Fibre2fashion.com · Aug 17
UK Retailers Seek £2.9 Billion Job-Rules Relief to Protect 780,000 Youth Roles
3 articles · Updated · Fibre2fashion.com · Aug 17
Summary
British retailers urged the government to soften Guaranteed Hours rules, raise the employer NICs threshold and keep a lower minimum wage band for 18- to 20-year-olds to protect entry-level hiring.
£2.9 billion in extra costs could come from the Guaranteed Hours proposals alone, the BRC said, on top of £6.5 billion in employment costs from recent National Living Wage and NIC increases.
Retail employs about 780,000 people aged 16 to 25—23% of all youth employment—and 55% of those jobs are part-time, making flexible scheduling central to the sector’s hiring model.
Opinium polling for the BRC found 80% of UK adults see part-time work such as Saturday jobs as important for helping young people into employment, rising to 91% among over-55s.
The warning comes after retail lost nearly 400,000 jobs over the past decade, with the industry arguing that locking temporary demand peaks into permanent hours could further shrink youth work opportunities.