Today’s figures (covering November to January) have people wondering if the labour market may be running out of road. The key figure in today’s release is for pay. Average weekly earnings for regular pay (3 month average) in January were just 1.2 per cent higher than they had been a year earlier – the fifth successive fall in the annual rate of increase.
Housing development is a cost-effective way out of recession that doesn’t suck in imports but tackles a number of problems.
Unemployment rose by 7,000 between November 2012 and January 2013 to 2.52 million, but the unemployment rate stays at 7.8%, today’s labour market statistics reveal.
Left Foot Forward has looked at a few things we already know will be in today’s Budget as well as at those things which stand half a chance of making it.
The defining societal trend in the UK over the past 30 years has been the growth in inequality, with an ever higher share of the national income captured by a wealthy elite, while the wages of ordinary working people stagnate. Redressing the balance need not come at a cost to enterprise.
New nuclear power stations fail every possible test – economic, consumer, environmental and arguably legal. Hinkley C will lock a generation of consumers into higher energy bills and distort energy policy by displacing newer, cheaper, cleaner technologies.
Across the country the very firms which are supposed to be seizing opportunities to return the economy to growth are encountering the tangle of immigration regulations which obstruct a significant part of their business plans to win export orders and expand into new markets.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – a body that advises Britain and other European countries on tax and spend policies – has been accused of enabling global corporations such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Hewlett- Packard Co. and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN) to dodge taxes by shifting profits into offshore subsidiaries.
One of the fundamental faultlines of the British model of finance capitalism – its failure to steer resources into the real, productive base of the economy – is not even on the government’s agenda. That’s why the prospect of sustained recovery is proving so elusive.
The latest inflation figures show that pay rises are being outstripped by inflation.
