Did you know that there are fewer British-born workers in the private sector than there
were in 1997? I’d be surprised if so: these official figures are not released. The Spectator managed to get them, on request from the Office of National Statistics. We use the figures in tomorrow’s
magazine, but I thought they deserves a little more prominence here. See the graph above, which shines a new light on the boasts Gordon Brown has been making.
He said his Glasgow speech last month that:
“If we had said twelve years ago there would be, even after a global recession, 2.5 million more jobs than in 1997 nobody would have believed us.”
No-one would have believed the scale of immigration, or the rapid expansion of the public sector – for these two are the only factors that have pushed the jobs total upwards.
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