The British jobs miracle continues – and in ways that continue to surprise. Your CoffeeHouse baristas have been crunching the numbers. They’re startling in a number of ways. For example:-
1. David Cameron’s record at job creation is better than any of his last four predecessors – including Tony Blair in a boom. See chart above.
2. Jobs are being created so quickly that even the March Budget prediction is out of date. The above graph shows a dotted line, indicating the OBR projections. The thick red one, above, shows that we’re already ahead.
3. British citizens are being hired Not always the same as British-born, you understand, but those holding a British passport are disproportionally benefitting in a way that has really taken off over the last year.
4. And the young have caught up with the old. When the crash came, the going got tough – and the old got going. The number of over-65s in work surged, which poses a tough question for the Keynesians. If it’s all about demand, why weren’t all age groups affected equally? Anyway, the young and old are now uniting.
5. But low wages (and low productivity) explain a lot of this. Just to put a downer on all of the above, I’ll say what the government tends not to emphasise. The toleration of above-average inflation has crushed the real value of wages and it’ll likely be 2020 before the average salary is back to where it was in 2007. Companies are hiring more people, because people are cheaper (and more likely to work part-time nowadays or on flexible (aka ‘zero hours’ contracts). Cameron’s jobs recovery is a bittersweet success. But a success nonetheless.
PS And what did Ed Miliband say would happen?
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