Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the next phase of the Government's economic response to coronavirus after confirming a new scheme.
The Job Support Scheme will see the Government "directly support" the wages of people in what they call "viable" jobs, working at least a third of their normal hours.
This would allow businesses to keep employees in a job on shorter hours.
Mr Sunak told the Commons: "The Government will directly support the wages of people in work, giving businesses who face depressed demand the option of keeping employees in a job on shorter hours rather than making them redundant. "
However, many people have asked the meaning of a 'viable job'.
According to ITV's political editor Robert Peston, he interpreted it to mean: "Businesses facing depressed revenues can choose to keep people on books so long as they work a third of normal hours, as alternative to redundancy, with government topping up wages significantly...
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"Will help businesses that have reduced revenues. Though it won't help whose revenues have utterly collapsed."
This would suggest a viable job is one where an employee is still working in a sector that is struggling due to the pandemic.
Whereas, a non-viable job could be a sector of employment that has remained closed since March.
The scheme will run for six months starting in November and employers retaining furloughed staff on shorter hours can claim both the Jobs Support Scheme and the Jobs Retention bonus.
Mr Sunak added that the primary goal remains "to support people's jobs".
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He said: "So our task now is to move to the next stage of our economic plan, nurturing the recovery by protecting jobs through the difficult winter months.
"The underlying rationale for the next phase of economic support must be different to what came before.
"The primary goal of our economic policy remains unchanged - to support people's jobs - but the way we achieve that must evolve."
