Introduction

The coronavirus pandemic has caused millions of people to lose their jobs and forced thousands more temporarily out of work, with no idea if they'll still have a job to go back to. In this programme, we’ll be assessing the post-Covid job landscape and asking whether a radical new approach is needed to prevent global mass unemployment. Neil and Sam discuss Denmark's approach to employment and teach you vocabulary along the way.

This week's question

One man who knows a lot about jobs is Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, a company employing over 150 thousand workers. He’s made gloomy predictions about the number of people out of work – but how many people does he predict will be left unemployed this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic? Is it:

a) one quarter of a billion people?

b) one third of a billion people?

c) half a billion people?

Listen to the programme to find out the answer.

200924_6min_english_mass_unemployment.pdf