One in 10 retail jobs at risk by 2028 amid rising costs – report

A NEW report has warned that one in 10 jobs in the UK retail sector could be lost by 2028 due to escalating cost pressures.

- AMBER MURRAY

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has found that since 2015, more than 350,000 retail jobs have been cut, a figure nearly 10 times larger than the total number of jobs in the steel industry.

Despite the government's “repeated interventions [in steel] to prevent factory closures and save British jobs,” the retail sector has been burdened with increasing costs and bureaucracy, according to the BRC.

Amendments to Employer's National Insurance have resulted in a £2.4 billion expense for the industry, while the rise in the National Living Wage in April added an extra £2.7bn to wage costs.