Industry leaders are stepping up calls for the Job Retention Scheme to be extended to help the economic recovery.
Make UK warned that skills could be lost, leaving the UK in the "slow lane", behind competitors.
The manufacturers' organisation said a survey of more than 220 companies showed strong support for extending the furlough scheme, which is set to end next month.
Almost one in four respondents disagreed with the Government's decision to end the scheme, saying it should be extended to critical sectors.
Make UK said an extension could help avoid a second wave of redundancies which the survey shows are in the pipeline.
More than two-fifths of companies surveyed said they have already cut jobs, while almost a further third revealed they intend to in the next six months.
The aerospace and automotive sectors are those most in need of an extension, said Make UK.
Chief executive Stephen Phipson said: "The protection of key skills should be a strategic national priority as this will be the first building block in getting the economy up and running.
"Ensuring that those sectors which are at the forefront of technology and will provide the growth sectors and high-skill jobs in recovery should receive the greatest support possible.
"The starting point for this should be an extension of the Job Retention Scheme to those sectors which are not just our most important but who have been hit hardest.
"Failure to do so will leave us out of step with our major competitors and risk a loss of key skills when we can least afford to do so."
Steve Turner, Unite's assistant general secretary, said: "UK manufacturing is vital to our economic recovery.
"It will power the jobs of tomorrow and keep communities strong in those parts of the country that the PM has pledged to 'level up'.
"But without urgent action by the PM, these communities will suffer terribly as the gates close on the businesses that sit at their heart.
"The PM and his government cannot abandon these workers to this fate. All we are asking is that our government takes the best of what other nations are doing to protect working people.
"If Merkel, Macron and even Donald Trump's US are taking action to protect jobs then surely Boris Johnson can do the same for the workers of the UK."
