The employers body Confederation of British Industry has set out its proposals for the first hundred days of the new Government – and it doesn’t make comfortable reading for the Tories. The…Read more…
UK Must Become Modern Manufacturing Economy Says TUC
Sajid Javid on Question Time: yet more labour market spin
Last night’s BBC Question Time (20 minutes into the iPlayer recording) featured Sajid Javid MP, a member of Cameron’s cabinet, defiantly claim that 80% of the jobs created in the past 5 years have been both full time and high-skilled in response to an audience member who was rightly concerned about…Read more…
Unite Analysis Of Osborne’s Last Budget
By the Unite Political Department To call George Osborne’s performance, hopefully for the last time, at the Commons’ despatch box a budget for the nation is stretching credulity to its limits. With…Read more…
#Budget2015 Roundup
The TUC’s economic and social affairs team has been working flat out to pick apart, scrutinise and analyse the final budget of this Parliament. Here are some of the most popular posts: 1. Welfare cutsThe Chancellor referred to £12 billion of welfare cuts. Nicola Smith crunches the numbers to…Read more…
The UK is the only major G7 economy where taxes have not helped to close the deficit
In Box 4.5 of their Economic and Fiscal forecast the OBR set out a few helpful home truths about the UK’s deficit reduction plan compared to competitor economies over 2009 to 2014. Their conclusions are striking: The UK was the only country where the deficit has not been reduced by having…Read more…
The Budget changes nothing: the road from austerity has led only to more austerity, not to prosperity
My budget reaction has been published on Left Foot Forward. I take issue with the Chancellor’s statement: “This is a Budget that takes Britain one more big step on the road from austerity to prosperity” (Chancellor’s Budget Speech) Austerity has not led to prosperity; it has led only to more…Read more…
#Budget2015: Osborne’s ‘savings culture’ provides more bonuses for the already wealthy
George Osborne concluded his Budget speech today with a crescendo: the Chancellor aims to create a “savings culture”, and announced four major new steps in “our savings revolution”. However this rhetoric will not mean much at all to so many of the population for whom the concept of saving is simply…Read more…
Total spending set to fall MORE in years ahead than Chancellor previously planned
Hidden away in the OBR’s charts are some important figures on ‘Total Managed Expenditure’ – essentially all of the money government spends on services, pensions, help for low income workers and capital investment. These data show that in the years immediately after the…Read more…
#Budget2015: The worst public spending cuts are still to come
There was much pre-Budget speculation that the Chancellor was going to use today’s Budget to ease off on austerity and reduce the scale of planned public service cuts in the year ahead. But although he’s made some minor changes to his future forecasts, the scale of spending reductions…Read more…
Jobs, Fair Pay, Investment. Three things we need from Budget 2015
We recently set out our detailed, 35-page pre-budget statement. It sets out what we think working people in Britain need from this budget. At the core of it, there are three things we’re looking for. I’ve explained them briefly in the video below.
The post Jobs, Fair Pay, Investment….Read more…
Productivity: no puzzle about it
TUC work issued today contests widely-held views that weak growth in productivity is down to failures of skills and/or other defects with the structure of the economy. Our research shows instead that the government’s austerity policies should take most of the blame for the productivity…Read more…
The demand interpretation of productivity outcomes (technical)
This post follows up the main one on the productivity puzzle, and the fuller TUC report issued today. Most contributions to the debate on the productivity puzzle recognise both demand and supply must play a part. But any arguments about demand are norm…Read more…
IFS show incomes for most WORKING-AGE people actually FALLING over this parliament
In spite of what the IFS are reported as saying (eg ‘household incomes finally top 2008′), they confirm that real pay is down. They show median incomes for most working-age people actually fell: by -2.5% for those aged 31-59, and -7.6% for those aged 22-30 (between 2007-08 and 2014-15,…Read more…
Housing inequality and soaring rent costs
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) released the 2013-14 English Housing Survey data yesterday, containing some remarkable news on the English housing market. The press focused mainly on the news that outright owners of homes now…Read more…
Germany: IG Metall Wins 3.4% Pay Deal
Germany’s largest union IG Metall which cover engineering, automotive, aerospace, electrical and other skilled metalworking trades has agreed a 3.4% pay rise for 12 months from April. The union,…Read more…
A culture of excess – the pay of the people who set FTSE directors’ pay
The TUC has published a new report on the pay of FTSE 100 remuneration committees members, who are responsible for setting company directors’ pay. Looking at total earnings from their different board positions, it finds that on average FTSE remuneration committee members are paid £441,383 per year…Read more…
GDP growth is down in cash terms, showing how disinflation threatens the public finances
In cash terms GDP annual growth slowed to 3.8% in the fourth quarter of 2014, down -0.7 percentage points from 4.5% in quarter three. This follows ongoing reductions in the annual GDP deflator growth, to 1.1% in quarter four from 1.9% in quarter three….Read more…
Britain’s Living Wage Blackspots
One in five jobs pay less than the living wage. But you won’t find them evenly distributed across the UK. In some constituencies, over half of full-time workers get less than living wages. We’ve mapped almost every constituency in England, Wales, and Scotland below: Source: House of…Read more…
The Great Brain Robbery
At the elementary level of price data aggregation a consumer price index can utilise the ratio of averages or the average of relatives … blah, blah, blah … everyone’s stopped listening. There’s no getting away from the fact that debates on inflation measurement can be a fiendishly…Read more…