Twelve million people were unemployed, and conventional wisdom said the only thing to do was to ride it out, wait, and hope that things would turn around.
Even the very phrase “job-seeker's allowance” is about redefining the unemployed as a “job-seeker” who had no fundamental right to a benefit, he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions.
Some businesses and states have blamed government benefits, pay for unemployed workers during the COVID pandemic as one reason why people weren't motivated to go back to work, but those benefits have expired.