Parents with children at home ‘more likely to fear end of the furlough scheme’

Parents with children living at home are more likely to be worried about the end of the furlough scheme, according to a survey.

A quarter (25%) of families with children at home fear the end of the scheme will have an impact on their jobs, compared with just under one in 10 (9%) households without children living at home.

The scheme is set to run until September 30.

The findings were made in comparethemarket.com’s latest household financial confidence tracker.

If the end of furlough scheme does affect their job status, 55% of families with children at home said they would be forced to take on more debt and 61% would struggle to afford the weekly shop.

Nearly three in 10 (28%) families with children reported finding it difficult to pay their bills in recent weeks and 26% are concerned about their ability to make ends meet in the near future.

However a third (33%) of families with children anticipate their finances will be in a better position by the end of the year than they are now and 32% are confident that the UK economy will be resilient as the country recovers from the pandemic.

More than 2,000 people were surveyed across the UK between June 30 and July 1.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “We deliberately went long with our unprecedented package of support to provide certainty to businesses and their staff during the next stage of our recovery and keep protecting jobs and livelihoods.

“The furlough scheme has already protected 11.6 million jobs and is in place until the end of September as part of our multibillion-pound Plan for Jobs which is helping people retrain, build new skills and get back into work.”