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ITV News Meridian : LoveLocalJobs.com interviewed about how Covid-19 has impacted the local region

Written by: ITV News Meridian
Published on: 4 Nov 2020

We were delighted to be asked by ITV News Meridian to talk about how Covid-19 has impacted the local region in particular Crawley. 

Once upon a time getting a job in Crawley would be pretty straightforward but now that's not so easy. The nature of the jobs being advertised has changed, "There's a lot more part-time and flexible vacancies being offered.

"There's a lot of businesses based here in the healthcare, in the digital section, in the tech section where there are those skilled and professional jobs but for some reason there's always been a lower level of expectation in Crawley amongst the employment community.

"They haven't had the capacity to tap into those and that needs to change."

ITV news

Click here to watch the video above to watch 'Crawley: Covid-19 and an airport town's downturn'

Speak to people who live in Crawley and chances are they or someone they know has been impacted financially by Covid-19.

25,800 people were on furlough, the highest in West Sussex, and the town has seen one of the largest increases anywhere of people claiming unemployment benefit.

Its success has followed in the shadow of Gatwick Airport but since the decline of flights because of the pandemic.

British Airways, Virgin, Easyjet, Norwegian and the airport itself have all made redundancies.

There's also been a huge domino effect on jobs with thousands of people who worked directly or indirectly for the aviation industry now out of work.