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.
