Well lots of people are putting a positive light on the UK performance not least the IMF who were telling the Tories to change tack not that long ago. At least, they have swallowed their pride now.

TBF to GO he has been playing down the prospects for several months. Despite his best intentions to show otherwise he is not completely ignorant of what is going on (which is why actual policy is very different to what they pretend and others state)

Just a pity for poor old Alex Salmond looking at how badly NS and financial services are doing right now!!!!

The job market is on some sort of hallucinogenic substance.

Recently redundant and all that’s on offer* is more responsibility and more commitment wanted for half the salary.
My solution has been to take half my past salary but do something I enjoy and use some of my redundancy money to clear all my debts off. We have cancelled all subscriptions and recurring discretionary payments and will now live month to month and not take on any long or medium term financial commitments or anything else that requires a commitment to future payments.

Feeling rich at the moment with our “booming” economy? no, but in one sense, sort of.

*I use the word ‘offer’ in the sense that someone has advertised it, not that it actually exists.

teamhurtmore – Member

binners – Member
Repeat after me:

An increase in house prices is not economic growth

No but an increase in the wealth effect is a well known and obvious way of stimulating consumption

We don’t need consumption, we need production. Production for export just like the German economy. Otherwise the UK (with it’s blinkered obsession with house prices and personal debt) will continue to decline, each and every year whilst we continue to consume and import more than we export.

I don’t agree with Binners. Unlucky.

Rebel – indeed which is why a surprisingly strong performance from net exports since the crash has been good news. That has been a bigger contribution than consumption to the recovery. Exactly what you are saying.

Do you want to thank the coalition or shall I? 😉

Well lots of people are putting a positive light on the UK performance not least the IMF who were telling the Tories to change tack not that long ago. At least, they have swallowed their pride now

This the same IMF that didn’t see the banking crisis coming? Well theres a credible reference then.

According to TradingEconomics, exports have been pretty flat since 2011 and are now falling?

Its all PR in the run up to the election.

Sainsburys near me has got rid of nearly all its till staff recently, its just machines in there now, same with several other local shops. So more people on the dole, more families with less income, less customer service, less people with money to spend, more taxes going to support the unfortunates on the dole while all the roads, libraries, local maintanance, health service etc go even further down the pan or vanish totally. They even took all the dog litter bins away from here so that they did not have to pay staff to empty them, they have sunk so low financially.

A friend who has been made redundant for the 2nd time in 18 months says there are even less jobs about to apply for than last time and it was bad enough back then.

Pretty much everything unless highly skilled seems to have dropped down to minimum wage or less than a pound above it.

More and more zero hours contracts despite bad publicity.

Load of fat cats just got great pay rises for their Board level jobs – so alls well really then. For some. More money at the top is all that counts.

According to TradingEconomics, exports have been pretty flat since 2011 and are now falling?

City AM carried a similar story about how poorly exports are performing

The IMF (and WB, OECD etc) are in a state of flux policy wise. They are still reeling from the failure of their analysis in the lead up to 2008.

They can see that they missed something and that something needs to change to avoid the same thing happening again – but are struggling to understand what to do on both. The answer at the moment is around reducing inequalities both domestic and inter-nation but with no real idea how to do this and nothing vaguely approaching a consensus.

I was referring to the period between the crisis and now as this is what the headlines are about.

Since then, consumption is flat, investment is down, government spending is up and net exports are up. Surprising, but true especially given the weaknesses in our core export markets.

The IMF are indeed in a pickle – not least having a French woman at the head. It must stick in her elegant throat to compare the performance of UK v France at the moment 😉

In term of exports I’d have thought we need to focus on high end ie innovative and where UK brand adds value. We are always going struggle on generic mass production where low labour costs are a big factor.

To do this we need an up-skilled workforce – which requires investment, not austerity…

Import substitution with domestic production is another avenue – increased transport costs help with onshoring this type on manufacturing, but I can’t see it being much more than niche.

I’ve we can’t pull this trick off I think we are doomed to some sort of levelling down as China and India level up. Not the greatest prospect. Then again I am a natural pessimist

The IMF are indeed in a pickle – not least having a French woman at the head. It must stick in here elegant throat to compare the performance of UK v France at the moment

… but French productivity is higher, which always boggles my mind. I do wonder about how well all these stats are put together/compare internationally

To do this we need an up-skilled workforce

But instead we concentrate on academic qualifications to the point where you need a degree to work in a call centre.

To do this we need an up-skilled workforce – which requires investment, not austerity…

Stop talking left wing socialist tosh!

What we need is a flexible workforce, zero hours, no pension rights, no employment rights, no skills, just low wages and everything will be great (if you’re a billionaire).

footflaps – Member
To do this we need an up-skilled workforce – which requires investment, not austerity…
Stop talking left wing socialist tosh!

left wing socialist tosh!!!! That’s classic supply-side economic policy. How to produce more output at a lower price level? Education and up-skilling the workforce is an essential part of SS policies. And who was the last major political figure to bang on about SS policies…….? 😉

I blame everything on the public sector

But instead we concentrate on academic qualifications to the point where you need a degree to work in a call centre.

And an MPhil to be a Barrista 🙂

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/barrister-to-barista-the-rise-of-parttime-britain-1771186.html

I blame everything on the public sector

You are John Redwood and I claim my £5!

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/yet-more-shameless-begging-for-money-charity-content

isn’t cross-posting a capital offence?

It’s for charidee, though.

In answer to the OP, definitely not I am a public sector worker (i’m actually quite a nice person!) and the had 0% pay increases in 2010-2012 and 1% pay increases for the last 2 years, coupled with increases in my pension contributions mean my take home pay is substanially less than it was in 2009 (don’t get me wrong i don’t mind saving for my retirement but when you get turned down for a mortgage because “You pay too much into your pension” you realise that perhaps the balance has swung to far the other way). And with inflation out stripping wage rises the way it is i’m definitely not feeling it.

even more unbalanced than ever, looks like the banks gobbled up QE and kept it to themselves.

The Germans reached the same position back in 2010, 2011 for the US & France.

even more unbalanced than ever, looks like the banks gobbled up QE and kept it to themselves.

Kind of. They appear to have dished it out as mortgages to people who can’t afford to get in any more debt!

Remember when people said QE would cause inflation – and a year later we had 20% increase in London house prices when everyone’s still skint? No causality, obviously 😯

No we don’t feel richer and we shouldn’t. As a nation we’re poorer. The GDP is about where it was before the crash but there are 2 million more people in the country than there were pre crash, so we are all poorer. There is no cost of living crisis. Actually, I’d say we’re not poorer now than we were, we were just not as rich as we thought we were pre crash.

This rebalancing of the economy isn’t what people are expecting too. Forget a return to heavy industry employing hundreds of thousands of people. Manufacturing has moved on. These new manufacturing jobs will be highly skilled, high tech jobs, more akin to IT.

According to the ‘experts’ on R4 It’s the hourglass economy we’ll have apparently. Lots of low skilled low paid jobs at the bottom, with more high skilled, high tech, very well paid jobs at the top with an absence of the high volume reasonably well paid blue and white collar and middle management jobs. So doing well at school and getting the right degrees and qualifications that are useful to real life will be much more important. Sounds scary to me, a proper two tier society.

Education, education, education….. 😉

It’s was help to buy rather than QE that had the direct impact on housing, but the housing bubble is very localised. The ONS has already suggested that this data is likely to be revised up. This recession has been notable for its length but it’s fortunately surprisingly limited impact on employment compared with past recession.

Wasn’t the rebalancing more away from financial services and public sector? The former has not done as well as the services line above suggests.

You’re bang on! The economy is being stripped of those middle income jobs, in the same way as it was stripped of manufacturing jobs in the 80’s. They’re being outsourced abroad, and made redundant through technology.

And a lot of what’s left will be subject to a race to the bottom. As the supply of educated, skilled workers compete for far fewer positions, employers have used the opportunity to slash salaries. I reckon my own industry has seen a 20 – 30% cut across the board since the crash. I can’t see this changing any time soon. They’re falling further behind year on year. There’s no way they’re going to get back to anything like the previous levels .

In the long term I can’t see how this sustains our economy, other than the same taking on of cheap credit to prop up falling living standards. And we all know how that ends…..

Address two underlying problems – debt and low productivity. Neither are short term fixes sadly.

My older one has two summer jobs/internships – one serving others and being paid the min wage, the other using his education in a more cerebral environment and being paid well. His views on the relative merits/demerits are interesting as are his obvious future choices to avoid the hourglass.

I think my wife’s feeling rich, just bought me some new shoes even though there’s plenty of life left in my old shoes.

In answer to the op, yes. And I’ve managed to give a 2.5% raise, plus bonuses plus merit rises in the last 2 years, and there should be more if the same this year. Out market place (home improvement / development) is looking very good right now.