Ilovecheese It's highly likely that there will be masses of businesses going bust as well as mass unemployment.
The vast majority of the business in the UK are SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).
The total number of SMEs is 5.9 million
Of these 5.82 million employ between 0 and 49 people
4.5 million SME's had no employees. Of these 3.5 milion were sole proprietorships (ie self employed)
2 million were actively trading companies
405,000 were ordinary partnerships
SME's provide 3/5 of the employment in the UK.
Many of these business are going to find it difficult to start up again once this crisis is over.
Unfortunately the likes of Rishi Sunak - formerly an anlayst for Goldman Saks followed by partnerships in hedge funds - do not, and probably cannot, understand how these business work and there are many more in the government like him, only maybe not quite so rich. He comes across as being sincere but as someone else wrote in on of these threads, he won't have undergone a damascene convrsion.