Richard Exell
Yesterday the quarterly statistics for the Young Person’s Guarantee underlined its tremendous promise.
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Richard Exell
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Adam Lent
So common has it become for the White House to blame all bad news on the last administration that a Washington joke claims that Obama is planning to name a newly discovered trench deep under the US, “Bush’s Fault”.
Much more of this sort of stuff from the Coalition and maybe we’ll soon see Gordon’s Fault opening up somewhere under Whitehall.
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Tony Dolphin on Left Foot Forward looks at the strategy of sacrificing public sector demand in the hope that the private sector ond exports will take the strain. It doesn't seem to be working.
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Richard Exell
Today’s employment figures confirm the problems facing older unemployed people. In the first two years of the recession, it was clear that young people were being hit harder than any other group, and I argued that they should be the primary target for government support.
I still think that we have to pull all the stops out to stop creating another generation of young people facing greater poverty and worse employment prospects for the rest of their lives. But it’s becoming plain that there’s a group of older unemployed people who are finding it hard to get back into employment. Since the start of the year, when the labour market began to recover, over-50s have gained less than other groups.
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Nicola Smith
I have a post up on Left Foot Forward discussing the latest labour market data – while employment continues to increase, and unemployment is still falling, the rates of change have started to slow. So far vacancies have failed to pick up. There are still five jobseekers for each job nationally, and that’s before the 2,339,000 economically inactive people who would like to work have been included. The Government needs to focus on providing unemployed people with real support to move into work– and on a growth strategy that will create jobs – but so far it is failing on both counts.
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Alice Hood
Local Government Chronicle reports (subscription required) that Nottinghamshire County Council is looking to cut up for a quarter of its workforce over the next three years.
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Richard Exell
One week after Play Day, Michael Gove has frozen the Playbuilder scheme. (Last month Nicola reported rumours that this was going to happen.)
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Richard Exell
More businesses are being hit by the cuts in public spending. Yesterday, TUI Travel saw its share price fall 10 per cent after it issued a profit warning; the company said bookings for holidays had fallen because of warmer weather in the UK and the planned budget cuts.
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Richard Exell
The list of Connexions services hit by cuts grows ever longer, with Cheshire and Warrington Connexions facing a £500,000 cut that is likely to affect services for vulnerable groups, such as teenage parents;
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Rob Holdsworth
So the Government has scored 47% in its interim performance test, based on its first three months in office. Who needs Alan Budd and the Office for Budget Responsibility when you have the kind of independent rigorous analysis kindly provided free of charge by the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
As an ordinary taxpayer I should probably take their analysis more seriously, though I shudder to think that anyone in the Government does.