The ONS has produced one of its essential but really annoying reforms to the way it gathers and uses data, annoying because they make comparisons with the past difficult.
But the latest unemployment data seems to show employment is still below the level before Covid, so we can assume that a lot of people just gave up on work or have a long term illness which means they can’t work.
Also unemployment is up and vacancies are down, not a happy place to be while wages are increasing faster than inflation but they will have to do that for a long time to make up for the massive hit that inflation has made to pay.
All in all it points to a slow and possibly slowing economy without enough growth to create jobs or maintain current employment levels, with a larger than normal number of people who have dropped out of the workforce.
This is not healthy especially when you realise that the economy is in the middle of a skills shortage. The UK desperately needs growth, skills and a better health service.
What it has is a government that accuses the unemployed of making a lifestyle choice to live off benefits.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
In a related set of comments Heather Cox Richardson talks in the first half of her Substack today about the US investing in tech, jobs and moving away from the alleged sanctity of markets - https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/october-23-2023?r=4n8n0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I wish to god our benighted government had even a fraction of this vision
succinct assessment. Better than the Today programme!!