UK employers will have to shoulder more of the costs of furlough from today (Thursday) as the government starts to wind down its job support scheme.

About 1.5 million workers are still on furlough, so the change will affect thousands of firms across the country.

Although staff will continue to receive 80% of their wages, employers will pay part of that for the first time.

That could prompt layoffs, with older workers at greater risk of redundancy, according to think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Since March 2020, the government has paid 80% of the salaries of employees (up to a maximum government contribution of £2,500 per month) - with the employers only having to pick up the (small) bill for employer National Insurance and pension contributions since last August.

The big change today is that the government will only pay 70% of the furloughed employee's salary, so the employer has to pay (at least) 10% of the salary themselves.

In August and September, the Government plans that employers will have to pay at least 20%, with the government picking up 60%.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said: "For a furloughed employee previously earning £20,000 per year, the cost to an employer of keeping them will rise from £155 per month in June, to £322 in July and £489 per month in August and September, after which the scheme is due to end.

"With the cost of keeping employees on furlough rising, we therefore expect to see rising redundancies over the summer even before the final end of the scheme.

"The wind down of the furlough scheme represents a step towards 'normality' in the labour market, but it also will mean big income losses for many of those who end up unemployed unless they are swiftly able to find alternative employment."

According to the BBC, the government has spent £66bn on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, as furlough is officially known, and it has supported 11.2 million jobs since March 2020.

At the end of March this year, more than a third of employers still had staff on furlough. But since then, the gradual opening up of non-essential retail and large parts of the hospitality sector has allowed many of those workers to return.

Now only about one in 20 workers who are employed by businesses are either fully or partially furloughed.