The EconomistAugust 22nd 2020 Britain 472 ing jobs through furlough schemes and
part-time work programmes. France has al-
ready extended its scheme to two years,
and Germany is likely to follow. America
opted for higher redundancies while offer-
ing generous support to the unemployed.
Britain will soon have neither a fur-
lough scheme nor generous unemploy-
ment benefits. Universal credit was in-
creased by just £20 a week at the budget in
March. The replacement ratio—the per-
centage of their previous income that Brit-
ish workers receive from benefits—is
among the lowest in the oecd, and lower
than in the early 1990s (see chart below). A
rise in unemployment will thus not only be
painful for victims, but also suck spending
power from the economy.
Unlike the exam-results system, which
has collapsed under the strain of the crisis
(see Bagehot), the benefits system can
probably cope. In April, before the furlough
scheme was in place, initial claims leapt
from 100,000 or so a week to over half a
million. Claimants jammed phone lines
and sat in digital queues. Since then the De-
partment for Work and Pensions has rede-
ployed 10,000 staff to processing roles, and
reckons it can deal with a second upswing.
ButunlikemanyEuropeancountries,
Britainhasputlittleeffortintoactively
supportinggettingpeopleintoworkinre-
centyears.Themarkethaslookedafterit-
self. These days the governmentoffices
thatusedto helppeoplefindjobs, now
knownasJobcentrePlus,monitorworkers
ratherthangivethema hand.“Ispentmay-
be80%ofmytimeprocessingclaimsand
paymentsandanother15%onstoppingthe
mostobviouscasesoffraud,”saysa long-
servingJobcentrestaffmember.
Britain’s experience of active labour-
marketpolicieshasnotbeenencouraging,
butthegovernmentintendstotrysome.
RishiSunak,thechancellor,hasallocated
£1.6bn($2.1bn)tosupportingworksearch
and hiring job coaches and £2.1bnto a
schemetofund“high-qualityjobs”forthe
young.Detailsarescarce.Theonlysuch
schemethathashadmuchsuccessinre-
centyearswastheFutureJobsFund(fjf)
launchedin2009,whichprovidedyoung
peoplewithsubsidisedjobsandtraining.
Thosewhotookpartweremorelikelytobe
inworkandlesslikelytoclaimbenefits
aftertheyhadfinishedthescheme.
The dwp should be brushing up its
knowledgeof active labour-market poli-
cies.Ifmassunemploymentisontheway,
it’sgoingtoneedsomeideasthatwork. 7Doleful
Britain,unemployment-relatedbenefits,%Sources:ResolutionFoundation;
FiscalFacts;ONS;BankofEngland403020100
20102000908070601948As a share of full-time adult
minimum wage earningsAsa shareofaverageweeklyearningsWhere it will hit hardest
Britain, jobs per £1m output
2019, by selected sectorSources: Resolution Foundation; ONSManufacturingConstructionProfessional, scientific
& technical activitiesTransport & storageWholesale, retail
& motor tradesOther servicesAdministrative
& support activitiesHospitality50403020100Share of overall
GDP contraction
Apr-Jun 2020, %9.510.58.26.010.37.78.011.0W
hen richard branson, a serial
entrepreneur, was 28, he snapped up
a Caribbean island to impress a woman. In
London he hobnobbed with rockstars and
posed for a photograph in the bath, naked
save for a well-positioned copy of the Fi-
nancial Times. Now the same age, Ben Fran-
cis has made more money than the young
Mr Branson had. But the Brummie founder
of Gymshark, an athletic clothing brand,
could hardly be less flamboyant. His black
and grey outfit matches his hq. When he
isn’t working, he’s lifting weights, messing
around with motorbikes or eating Nando’s.
“That’s literally all I do,” he says.“I’m a really
boring person.”
But the men share a lucrative knack for
capturing the zeitgeist. Mr Francis founded
Gymshark from his parents’ garage in 2012,
making gym gear his grandmother taught
him to sew. On August 14th, General Atlan-
tic, an American fund manager, bought a
21% stake in the firm, in a deal that valued it
at more than £1bn ($1.3bn). That transfor-
mation makes for a remarkable businessstory, but it also reveals how quickly gym
culture is changing in the rich world.
The brand’s early success owed much to
men like Mr Francis. When he first started
going to a gym at 16, he found it intimidat-
ing. “You have no idea what you’re doing,
you think everybody’s looking at you, you
feel really self-conscious. Am I doing this
bicep curl right?” So he turned to YouTube
and online forums for tips. His business
milks this merging of physical and online
spaces. The 125 influencers Gymshark pays
to market its brand on platforms like Insta-
gram are role models as much as fashion
models, offering the sort of encourage-
ment Mr Francis once sought. Instagram
provides motive as well as means: muscu-
lar men in tight-fitting gear attract envy as
well as romantic attention.
But Gymshark would not be nearly as
valuable if it were not for a second culture
shift. That is the trend for “athleisure”,
wearing gym gear not just for working out.
Though Gymshark initially targeted beefy
male weightlifters, women now account
for about two-thirds of its sales. And, as
Melis Kahya Akar of General Atlantic is
quick to point out, they are the bigger
spenders. Many women wear Gymshark to
lift weights, but plenty favour fit and fash-
ion over performance. Social media allow
Gymshark to target distinct demographics
simultaneously. A study in 2018 by Linus
Juhlin and Miretta Soini, then mbastu-
dents in Sweden, explains how it works.
The authors studied the Instagram
posts of 30 Gymshark influencers, includ-
ing such big noises as fitgurlmel, who has
1m followers. Male influencers were more
than twice as likely as their female coun-
terparts to pose while working out, but
much less likely to stress the fit, colour and
design of the gear. “Gym settings were
common in the male influencers’ posts,”
the authors wrote. In posts by women,
poses were more commonly “lifestyle-re-
lated”; one wore a sports bra to a basketball
game. So Mr Francis can afford to be boring.
A tribe of Instagrammers will do the talk-
ing—and the selling—for him. 7The success of a clothing brand reveals
what going to the gym is really aboutGymsharkPrimus Insta pares
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