Over-50s quitting the workforce fuels inflation, says John Lewis boss
"Regardless of what has happened coming out of Covid, if the labour market is that tight, if we continue to have far fewer people in work [or] looking for work - you've inevitably got more inflation and more wage inflation," she said.
"You do not realise the stress that you're under," he said. "What the lockdown and Covid did is make me slow down because you couldn't do anything."The 58-year-old, who lives in Kent, said his company were "very generous" to him while he was furloughed but said when he returned to work "the whole world for everybody had completely changed".
After speaking to his company, Mr Willis agreed to stay on to train a new member of staff before departing. He now works on a zero-hours contract job driving for the NHS where his wife, Grainne, works full-time. And despite the rising cost of living, he has no plans to return to full-time employment.
"How do we avoid the UK becoming Japan with very low, very persistently low, rates of productivity and very low persistent rates of growth? To come out of that you have got to get businesses investing." She said John Lewis had doubled its financial assistance fund - a pot of cash where workers can apply for grants and loans if they have difficulty paying bills - from £400,000 to £800,000.