A Hundred and Seventy Thousand
In October 2024, the Chancellor raised employer National Insurance from 13.8 percent to 15 percent and reduced the secondary threshold from £9,100 to £5,000. Every employer was affected. The hospitality sector felt it differently.
A kitchen running on three or four percent net margin does not absorb a payroll cost increase the way a professional services firm might. The wage base in hospitality skews toward part-time hours and lower pay bands. Cutting the secondary threshold meant NI became due earlier, on earnings that were previously below it. For a pub or restaurant running a mix of full-time kitchen staff and part-time floor workers, the bill arrived as a compounded increase: a higher rate on a broader base.
UKHospitality tracked what came next. In the thirteen months after October 2024, the sector lost 170,000 jobs.
What that number looks like on the ground
A kitchen team is not large. A well-run pub kitchen in Sussex runs two or three chefs on a service, with a fourth on prep. The floor has three or four people on a busy evening, fewer midweek. A restaurant of forty covers might employ twelve to fifteen people across the week, spread across part-time and full-time contracts.
170,000 jobs is a lot of kitchens making hard decisions about which shifts to cut, which contracts to let expire, which positions to leave unfilled. Some of those decisions left the kitchen running thin. Some preceded a closure. Some were the closure.
The venues that closed were not always struggling operations. The BBPA documented 161 pub closures in Q1 2026 alone, in venues still doing a brisk trade. The margin was there. The cost structure underneath it was not. The NI increase did not distinguish between a quiet room and a busy one.
What September looks like when the team is thinner
We run kitchens across Sussex: the Castle Inn, Tollgate, the Bull on the Green, the Berwick, Ash and Honey. The payroll pressures that registered across the sector registered here. The team heading into autumn is shaped partly by what the NI bills said, and partly by what the trading forecasts said they could carry.
September always tests the team. Summer staffing contracts wind down. The casual workers who built out the summer kitchen return to their courses. What stays is the core. In 2026, that core is managing the fixed overhead of the building with fewer people than the same kitchen might have had two years ago.
The covers still have to be served. The rota still has to be built. The kitchen still preps before it knows what the evening will bring.
The Budget that is seven weeks away
On 28 October, Burnham's government delivers its autumn Budget. The sector is watching it the way it has watched every Budget since 2024: with a specific question about whether the cost structure that produced 170,000 lost jobs is going to shift.
UKHospitality's ask has not changed. Cut hospitality VAT from 20 to 10 percent, permanently. Lower employer NI or raise the secondary threshold back toward where it was. Reform business rates across the whole sector, not just for one corner of it.
Whether those asks land on October 28 or not, the kitchens open this evening regardless. The rota was set this morning. The prep ran before the news.
The seat that does not wait
Around 4pm, when the shape of the night becomes clear, venues release on Halfseat the tables they expect to lose. Food at half price. Drinks at full price. A real cut of the booking fee going directly to the venue.
170,000 jobs is the toll of a cost structure that the October Budget might start to address, or might not. The fixed costs running underneath every kitchen tonight are identical to what they were before anyone started counting. The empty chair does not wait for the answer.