When lockdown arrived in March it sunk the UK economy.

The message was clear: Stay home.

And people did just that; there was a dramatic shift to either working from home or shutting down businesses entirely.

For a couple of weeks pretty much the only place you could go was the supermarket, followed a little while later by the opportunity to head to B&Q to queue for an hour and try to do a click and collect.

Now a second lockdown has arrived for England and the message once again is stay at home, but things are very different this time: considerably more remains open.

As England’s lockdown arrived, Wales and Northern Ireland were already in some form of lockdown and Scotland is running its own tight tiers system.

Yet, while rules vary across the nations, more businesses remain open, Britain has got used to working from home, and industries that can’t do that are permitted to keep going.

So, what happens now to the economy? How bad will the hit be? And is it just the hospitality sector and leisure sector that will be hammered this time round?

GDP took a nosedive as lockdown arrived and the UK economy was one of the worst hit in the world by coronavirus. Growth has picked up sharply since then, but the BoE now predicts a 2% contraction in the final three months of 2020

GDP took a nosedive as lockdown arrived and the UK economy was one of the worst hit in the world by coronavirus. Growth has picked up sharply since then, but the BoE now predicts a 2% contraction in the final three months of 2020

GDP took a nosedive as lockdown arrived and the UK economy was one of the worst-hit in the world by a coronavirus. Growth has picked up sharply since then, but the BoE now predicts a 2% contraction in the final three months of 2020

On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce, and Simon Lambert look at the economic effects of Lockdown 2 and how things could be better or worse.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England responded to the lockdown by keep rates in positive territory but pumping another £150billion into the financial system through quantitative easing.

More QE has been done since March that in all the years after the financial crisis: what does this mean for the economy and normal people?

Also on this week’s podcast: is it time to call the end of the property mini-boom, why are some of the self-employed still being left out while furlough is extended – and should Simon bother to try and get his Ryanair flight money back in vouchers?

How to listen to the This is Money podcast 

We publish our podcast every Friday to the player on This is Money, above, and on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) and on the podcast platforms Audioboom and Acast, both of which allow you to listen on desktop, mobile, or download an app. We also now publish to Spotify.

To download the Apple Podcasts app if you do not already have it, go to the App store. Or go to either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store on Android to download the Acast, AudioBoom, or Spotify app.

Press play to listen to this week’s full episode on the player above, or listen (and please subscribe and review us if you like the podcast) at Apple Podcasts, Acast, Audioboom, and Spotify or visit our This is Money Podcast page.

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This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk

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