Major British retailers axe 18,000 jobs as Labour’s tax and minimum wage hikes bite
Major British retailers have axed almost 18,000 jobs in the past year as Labour’s tax and minimum wage hikes bite.
It is the latest dire update to send alarm bells ringing over Britain’s unemployment crisis, which has been blamed on the Chancellor’s anti-growth tax raids over the past two years.
Job losses were led by Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket, which said its UK and Ireland headcount fell by nearly 5,000 in the year to March 2026.
Sainsbury’s, B&Q owner Kingfisher, and the John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose as well as the department stores, all recorded headcounts that were around 3,000 people lower than the year before.
The worrying figures come as Britain is set to suffer the biggest rise in unemployment of any major advanced economy as higher minimum wages put employers off hiring, the OECD warned this week.
Bloomberg’s analysis also found that fashion giant Next and the ‘King of Trainers’ JD Sports said their headcounts fell by around 1,500.
Alarm bells over retail
These figures can include both redundancies and employees who leave a business and are not replaced.
Rises in employer National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage have represented around £6.5 billion in extra costs for the sector, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
And businesses are also now facing fresh inflationary challenges emanating from the war in the Middle East.
Cost pressures have been felt acutely among retail and hospitality firms, which are huge private employers in Britain. The High Street has already seen firms such as Claire’s Accessories collapse, while closures loom at other chains, including former WH Smith shops now operating under TG Jones.
The Bloomberg News analysis of top firms’ annual reports comes as retailers have warned that it is harder to maintain roles in the sector, including part-time and seasonal shop roles that have traditionally been the first foot in the door of the working world for teenagers and young adults.
Pressure on employers comes as Alan Milburn last week said that the number of young people classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET) was ‘probably the most significant challenge facing our country’.
More than 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds were not in employment, education or training in the first three months of this year, the highest since 2013, according to fresh figures from the Office for National Statistics.
And the most recent OECD report said that demand for workers had ‘continued to slow, especially in sectors most exposed to higher minimum wages’.
The Paris-based body predicts that joblessness will soar from 4.8 per cent last year to 5.5 per cent in 2026.
The Government has argued that paying young workers more will give them more money in their pockets to spend.
Just days ago, Britain’s biggest business group, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said Labour was treating firms as ‘a cash tap’ after firms paid a record £345bn to the Treasury last year.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive at the British Retail Consortium, said: ‘Soaring business costs, including higher wages, increases to employer NICs, and the new packaging tax, have put retail businesses under significant pressure in the last two years. The impact is being felt across retail and in the growing number of young people not in employment, education or training.
‘As the largest private-sector employer, retail could be part of the solution to the youth unemployment crisis, but Government must join the dots between tax, red tape, and its efforts to reduce unemployment.’
This week the chairman of Marks & Spencer, where job numbers remained relatively stable, said that ‘rarely in the history’ of the retailer has Britain been ‘less friendly to growth and investment’.
In scathing comments, Archie Norman said that the company’s role was to ‘ride the waves’ of higher taxes, which have resulted in the continued ‘decline’ of local High Streets as smaller firms suffer.
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