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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Business
James Andrews

All the ways to keep making money legally if you're put on furlough

If you're put on furlough by your employer, you are not legally allowed to do any paid work for them.

But that doesn't necessarily mean you can't do any paid work at all.

Considering the furlough scheme only covers 80% of wages up to £2,500 a month - although employers can be more generous if they wish - a lot of people are struggling to pay bills and asking what they can do.

The good news is that there is wiggle room to let people keep earning if they need to and are able.

For example, if you worked two jobs - as a supermarket delivery driver in the day and in the pub in evenings and weekends - your pub job would currently be suspended, but your delivery driver work counts as essential.

That means the rules let you keep doing one while furloughed from the other.

And those rules apply to everyone.

Pubs are closed right now, seeing hundreds of thousands of staff furloughed (Getty Images)

The key question is is what's in your employment contract.

"There's nothing in the furlough rules to stop you from taking a job elsewhere if you're placed on furlough by an employer (doing so wouldn't affect your furlough pay either)," the MoneySavingExpert.com guide explains.

"But your employment contract may not allow it, so check."

Things you are definitely allowed to do while on furlough

An awful lot of things are OK (Getty)

The key here is to pick things that wouldn't stop you from doing your normal job if you came off furlough.

Some companies have even specified that you shouldn't take on any work that's done during the hours you would normally do your work for them, while others ban staff from working even in their own time without their express permission.

These positions aren't part of the furlough rules set by the Government, but could well be in your employment contract - meaning not following them would count as a breach.

But most firms are more lenient, and even in the strictest cases you might well have options.

So everything from selling on eBay to working nights riding for Deliveroo or driving for Uber is generally fine - provided it's not specifically excluded by your existing contract.

Other options people are turning to include home tutoring - with demand seen for everything from schoolwork to playing the  ukulelePokemonfashion, meditationslime making‘monsters from the deep'  and even Minecraft lessons.

Then there are things you could do at any time - including selling on pictures to completing surveys and testing websites.

The cash from these is less reliable and often lower than a more traditional part-time job, but it's worth exploring.

We've got a full guide to your options here.

And if you're wondering where you can find paid work at the moment - given the number of businesses that are shut down - there is help there too.

Jobs site Glassdoor just launched a dedicated Covid-19 job search page to help people affected by the pandemic focus on the latest open jobs across industries and companies that are actively hiring, or even experiencing a surge in hiring.

For example, Tesco, Amazon, Barclays, Google and KPMG are all currently in the middle of a hiring surge as they look for people to keep up with demand in call centres, supermarkets, for deliveries and in warehouses.

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