"Figure 1: Redundancies are increasing faster during the coronavirus pandemic than during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009","" " Redundancy rates, UK, seasonally adjusted, 2008 to 2009 and 2020","" "","" "Notes","1. The start of the economic downturn refers to the point in time where there was a contraction in the UK's gross domestic product (GDP) for two consecutive quarters. 2. The start of the economic downturn is April to June 2008 for the 2008 to 2009 series, and [January to March 2020](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpmonthlyestimateuk/march2020) for the 2020 series. 3. The redundancy rate is the ratio of the redundancy level for the given quarter to the seasonally adjusted number of employees in the previous quarter, multiplied by 1,000." "Unit","Per thousand employees" "","" "","2008 to 2009","2020" "Start of economic downturn ","4.8","3.8" "+ 1 month ","5.2","3.9" "+ 2 months ","5.4","4.1" "+ 3 months ","6.1","4.7" "+ 4 months ","6.9","5.5" "+ 5 months ","8.9","8.2" "+ 6 months ","10.3","11.3" "+ 7 months ","10.8","13.3" "+ 8 months ","11.1","14.2" "+ 9 months ","11.8","-" "+ 10 months ","12.2","-" "+ 11 months ","12.0","-" "+ 12 months ","10.6","-"