How Cumbrian companies have bounced back from the pandemic

Professor Frank Peck of the University of Cumbria says that recent data on employment change shows how the major sectors in the county have performed from 2019-2021. Commentators on the economy in recent years have debated “bounce-back” - the extent to which industries, firms and local economies have been able to recover from the shock imposed by the pandemic. Assessment of the level of bounce-back has become more plausible with the passage of time as new (and possibly more reliable) data has been published. Usefully, we now have a time series on employment by sector over the period of the pandemic between 2019 and 2021 which enables some initial assessment of change in the economy over that period of major disruption to economic activity. The data, of course, is not perfect. It is based on a sample survey of workplaces conducted in September of each year. Due to potential sampling errors, numbers are rounded and therefore sectors with small numbers need to be handled with care. The survey is also taken in September so the data does not fully capture the peak of employment in hospitality, which is one of the county’s key sectors. But even so, with a response rate of around 70 per cent, it is more reliable than many surveys of this type