Money Box Live: Losing Your Job

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Unemployment recently rose to its highest level in almost four years. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate went up to 4.6 per cent in the three months to April, up from 4.5 per cent in the three months to March. That's the highest since the Summer of 2021 in which the country was in the depths of the Covid pandemic.

So today on Money Box Live we're asking what happens when you lose your job? What are your rights, what kind of payout might you get and how do you manage the money during a job hunt?

Felicity Hannah is joined by employment lawyer Rupa Mooker, Mike Fenn who's Head of Employee Relations at ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and Sarah Coles who is the Head of Personal Finance at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Producers: Sarah Rogers and Helen Ledwick Editor: Jess Quayle

(This programme was first aired on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 9th of July 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, today on the Moneybox Live podcast, we're asking
0:07.4	what happens when you lose your job? What are your rights? What kind of payout might you get?
0:12.6	And how do you manage the money during a job hunt? Unemployment recently rose to the highest level
0:18.0	since summer 2021. And remember, that's when the country was still in the
0:22.3	depths of the COVID pandemic. So today's program is for anyone caught up in job loss and job hunting.
0:28.8	First of all, we're going to hear from Joe. Now, he's a copywriter who's been struggling to get back
0:33.1	into work. And I just want to warn you, there are mentions of suicidal thoughts and self-harm in our
0:39.4	conversation.
0:40.4	Got quite a good career behind me. A couple years ago, I was made redundant. And then since then,
0:46.6	it's been very difficult to pick up work. I've just been picking up scraps. I've picked up one
0:51.1	contract for a few months. But yeah, just that the scraps aren't really
0:55.4	cutting it at the moment. It's been a significant financial pressure, presumably. Did you get a
1:01.4	redundancy payout to help you while you look for work? No, I didn't. I don't think I was there
1:07.5	long enough. So I was one company I was with let the entire marketing team go.
1:14.1	I was there about 10 months and they just called us all into the office and say that's it.
1:19.4	Because the business wasn't bringing in money. It was kind of the drop of a hat. We was all pulled in and we was told we all need to go and we
1:28.3	collected our stuff and went. It sounds like it's been a really, really tough time. What is it
1:33.9	meant for your finances? Abliterated. The savings I had have gone. Yeah, I need to start again.
1:42.9	I'm 43 now, but I have to start again really building my finances from scratch and building my life from scratch and hopefully getting my life to where I want it to look like. And I'm hoping, just hoping now that I can turn a corner.
1:57.8	What has this pressure and the financial pressure as well meant for your well-being,
2:02.7	your general health?
2:04.2	Yeah, I hit rock bottom.
	...

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