All the union news that's fit to blog...
There are many ways to raise an average. For example here are two ways to raise Average Earnings: Have more people on high pay Have fewer people on low pay And here are two ways of having fewer people on lower pay: Pay the low paid more Just ignore them The Average Weekly Earnings (AWE)…
The…Read more…
In May 2015 public sector net debt (excluding public sector banks) rose above £1,500 billion or £1½ trillion for the first time. Over the past four years, government borrowing has moved further and further above the original plans (see). Spending cuts have harmed the economy more than expected,…Read more…
Is it possible that anybody thinks the budget surplus law apparently to be announced in the Mansion House speech is about anything other than politics? It’s definitely stupid economics. Inevitably spending was higher and taxes were lower in the UK after the financial crash, and we had a small…Read more…
In the Independent today, James Moore reported Frances O’Grady’s remarks on household debt. These followed the Queen’s Speech economy debate last week, when Tory backbencher Mark Garnier attacked Labour’s record: “Does the Chancellor agree that the £1 trillion rise in household debt…Read more…
Yesterday the OECD set out their view of the global economy. They make a constructive and very strong case for borrowing to finance infrastructure spending. B-minus performance OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría awarded the OECD economic performance a B-minus “The global economy is projected to…Read more…
Just ahead of the election the weakness in the GDP figures was greeted with some scepticism (see here). Earlier this week there were disappointing manufacturing figures from Markit, who compile ‘purchasing managers’ index’ measures of activity. Yesterday Markit issued service…Read more…
The latest trade union membership figures and statistics published by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) in its statistical bulletin shows union membership for 2014 in the UK…Read more…
Over the past year official statistics have shown growth in the manufacturing sector steadily slowing to a near halt, with in 2015Q1 quarterly growth only just above zero at 0.1 per cent. Today two private sector sources reported this weakness continui…Read more…
GDP figures today are not exactly straightforward to unravel. The headline messages are the same as last month. Quarterly growth in 2015Q1 was unrevised at 0.3%, down from 0.6% in Q4. Compared with a year ago, growth is unrevised at 2.4%. The output fi…Read more…
President Obama may have got his way on ‘fast track’, the legislation he needs to drive through approval of a new generation of free trade agreements but US unions have vowed to continue to fight on…Read more…
Trade unions face a crisis like no other as 5 years of Tory rule beckon. We need a new vision — and we need it now, by Keith Ewing. Shortly after the general election in 2010, I wrote in these…Read more…
There is a sense in the discussion surrounding the latest inflation figures that those who are less-than-sanguine about the threat of deflation are somehow ignorant or even reckless. Here’s Robert Peston yesterday: However many of those who define themselves as “serious economists”…Read more…
In April 2015 CPI inflation was minus -0.1 per cent, after two months of zero per cent inflation. ONS have constructed historic data which suggest the last time CPI inflation fell was in March 1960, 55 years ago. The Chancellor first stressed the beneficial cost of living effects that some…Read more…
Lord Ashcroft’s poll of 12,000 voters the day after the election gives some indications on the role of the economy in peoples’ decisions. Responses to question 9 support the view that in spite of recent positive economic news, the majority of the population are not feeling the recovery. Only 25 per…Read more…
ONS released today another upbeat set of employment numbers, as well as an underlying nominal earnings figure above 2 per cent for the first time in approaching four years (see my colleague Richard Exell’s post). But in the meantime the Bank of England issued a sobering analysis of the nature of…Read more…
In a column in today’s Financial Times (‘What the next chancellor does not yet know’), Chris Giles sets the economic tone for the next Parliament in part on the basis of yet unknown productivity outcomes. For Giles, as for many others, productivity is an inherent quality or defect of the economy…Read more…
Well worth reading. An interesting paper produced by David Bailey, Gill Bentley, Alex de Ruyter and Stephen Hall. Click here to download the pdf.Read more…
A number of themes emerged in the different media commentaries on yesterday’s poor GDP results that are worth further examination: the idea expressed that the figures are highly uncertain and will be heavily revised; that weaker UK growth is in the context of ‘rising instability abroad’ (an…Read more…
Quarterly GDP growth is estimated at only 0.3% in 2015 Q1, half the rate of 0.6% seen in both Q3 and Q4 of 2014, and only a third of the 0.9% growth seen a year ago in 2014 Q1. The median view of commentators was for 0.5%, and 0.3% coincided with the most pessimistic of those…
The post The…Read more…
Public sector net borrowing figures today showed borrowing of £87.3 billion in the financial year 2014-15. Undoubtedly the Treasury will be making hay of it being marginally lower than the OBR Budget 2015 forecast of £90.2 billion. But the big picture remains the scale of the shortfall against the…Read more…