Five million self-employed in the UK have been hit hard by the pandemic

The COVID-19 crisis is one of the largest economic shocks that has taken place in living memory. While current official statistics only pick up the very start of the crisis, the Bank of England has warned that unemployment is likely to exceed the heights of the global financial crisis and that GDP could plunge by 14% in 2020, marking the deepest recession for centuries. While the picture looks bleak on aggregate, Jack Blundell and Stephen Machin (LSE) seek to understand the impact on the self-employed, of whom there are now 5 million in the UK, making up 15.3% of the workforce.