Posted By
Andrew Sissons
15 November 2012
Some of the UK’s economic commentators have become afflicted by a very strange idea recently: that consumer spending is going to rescue the UK economy. At the end of September, the front page of The Economist had the British economy “Heading out of the storm”; the leader inside contained the sub-heading “Consumers to the rescue”. The argument was that job creation, rising real incomes, falling inflation and “pent-up demand” was soon to release a burst of consumption-fuelled growth.
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Posted By
Annie Peate
25 October 2012
European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding’s fight to get more women in top jobs was dealt a significant blow this week when her proposal to introduce 40% quotas for women on boards across Europe was questioned over its legality.
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The headline from today’s GDP statistics – that the contraction in Q2 has been revised from 0.5% to 0.4% - is about the least interesting statistic in there. Today’s release, the Quarterly National Accounts, is packed full of numbers that give us a clue about how and why the UK economy is shrinking. Whereas the first estimate of GDP (which attracts most of the media coverage) is accompanied with so little data that most economists are left to make up explanations for why the economy performed as it did, the second release comes with enough figures to make your head spin.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
12 September 2012
The TUC was yesterday (11 Sept) reported to be moving towards backing co-ordinated industrial action to increase public sector pay. This is of course a perfectly legitimate goal for trade unions to pursue. Trade unions have also committed the TUC to campaign for maximising the number of jobs in the public sector in order to sustain quality public services. These are also legitimate goals. However, these objectives are not, under current circumstances, compatible. Unions can either campaign for higher pay for their members or keep as many of them as possible in jobs in order to preserve services, but not both.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
21 August 2012
Government ministers have reportedly taken the BBC to task for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the employment figures – a charge hard to fathom given current levels of uncertainty about labour market prospects. At the risk of being officially denounced, it is perfectly legitimate to look beneath the totals – good as they are - and suggest things are not quite as robust as the official view suggests.
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Posted By
Charles Levy
10 August 2012
London secured the games, in part on the back of their promised legacy impact. It will be many years before we know the extent to which London 2012 changes the fate of the East End of London, but in one area the legacy is off to an incredible start. We are doing an excellent job of positioning the UK on the global stage as a dynamic and creative location to invest. In the long-term this may be even more important than the regeneration projects.
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Posted By
Charles Levy
24 July 2012
Today (Tuesday 24 July) the Lords Science and Technology Committee published a detailed report into Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Subjects (STEM) . The paper rightly highlights that we simply don’t have enough good quality science graduates to drive innovation and growth.
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Posted By
Charles Levy
20 June 2012
Today’s labour market statistics were welcome news, but there may be a sting in the tail. Rising employment, falling unemployment and strong private sector job creation should always be welcomed, but it is surprising when the output numbers tell us we were entering a recession at exactly the same time.
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Posted By
Katy Jones
19 June 2012
Any period of unemployment while young can have a lasting negative impact on labour market experiences for a lifetime. But for the quarter of a million young people in the UK who have been out of work for more than a year the problem is even more serious. The longer a young person is out of work, education or training, the worse the long-term consequences for the individual and the economy.
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Posted By
Umair Haque
30 May 2012
To illustrate why I ask, consider this set of questions: How's your house price doing? Where would your 401K be, if central banks withdrew life support for banks?
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Posted By
Andrew Sissons
16 May 2012
Today’s job market figures contain plenty of good news. But for all these positive signs, there are a couple of doubts hanging over these numbers.
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Posted By
Gareth Quested
12 April 2012
This morning’s trade figures appeared to be disappointing reading, with the UK’s deficit on trade in goods and services rising to £3.4bn in February from £2.5bn in January. January’s figure itself was an increase from a previously estimated £1.8bn deficit.
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Posted By
Andrew Sissons
21 March 2012
The Chancellor told us that today’s Budget was aimed at “working families”. His Budget speech focused on tax changes to help those on middle and lower incomes, but in doing so he paid less attention to the real issues: growth and jobs.
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Posted By
Ian Brinkley
16 March 2012
A major focus for comments on the latest labour market figures was the much bigger rise in unemployment for women compared with men. Of the 28,000 increase in unemployed by the ILO measure, 22,000 were accounted for by women, with the female unemployment rate rising to 7.7 per cent.
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Posted By
Charles Levy
06 March 2012
Today’s (6 Mar) release from ONS does rather suggest that we may have too many graduates. They lead with two stylised facts “Recent graduates more likely to work in lower skill jobs than a decade ago” and “Over the same period the population of recent graduates who are no longer in education has increased by over 41 per cent”. From this it is not too much of a stretch to imagine this afternoon’s headlines and tomorrow’s comment pieces will claim that we should cut student numbers.
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