Dr. Karina Doorley:

It is certainly a policy tool that could be used in that respect. If extended receipt of the PUP is cut off for some individuals but not others, some activation measure could be linked to it that would either help them to retrain for, or get job experience in, another industry. That would certainly help with recovery. It will be important, in order to minimise the scarring effects after people have been out of work for so long, to get them back to work, if they want to and are able to. In order to do that, we need to improve incentives to work which may, given health concerns, need to be higher post-pandemic than they were before. The incentive to work needs to improve and the job opportunities need to be there.

Whether they are different job opportunities from what was there before will dictate whether the PUP should be tied to some sort of activation measure or not.