As many people have fallen out of work in the initial weeks of the coronavirus crisis as in the entire global financial crisis, according to initial indications from the US and European labour markets.

Early figures suggest that on both sides of the Atlantic, the number of people no longer in their regular employment has risen to around 10 per cent of the workforce in a single two-week period — an increase as large as that which took place between 2007 and 2009.

Yet there is a stark contrast between the US, where there has been a rapid surge in redundancies, and European countries where the majority of workers affected have been laid off temporarily but should still have a job to return to, with the state supporting part of their wages in the meantime.