Richard Exell

Manufacturing is still the economy’s bright spot, with the CBI’s Industrial Trends survey showing output rising – and orders too, which bodes well for the future.

Most figures in the survey are balances – they show the difference between those giving positive and negative replies – and they look good:

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Richard Exell

Download the 11th TUC Labour Market Report

Today we have published our latest Labour Market Report based on the Office for National Statistics monthly employment figures. In this issue, we look at the rise in unemployment and fall in employment and the growth of involuntary part-time work. Full-time and employee employment levels have yet to show any signs of recovery from the downturn.

Economic inactivity is also on the rise, especially for women – there was a 55,000 increase in the number of economically inactive women from last month’s figures. The report also looks at what has happened to the employment rate gender gap over the past couple of years: it shrank in the recession but has been rising again for a year so that men’s employment rate is once again more than ten percentage points higher than women’s.

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Richard Exell

The Retail Sales Index figures released today by the Office for National Statistics are very disappointing. Measured by the volume of sales, December 2010 was unchanged from December 2009 (when the country was only just emerging from recession). Measured by value, sales were up 2 per cent on the year, but – remarkably – down 0.8 per cent on the level seen in November.

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• Housing benefit cuts will hit economic growth, says OECD
  The Guardian reports that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development criticises the coalitions plans for Housing Benefit as a threat to labour mobility.
• Latest employment figures show signs service is breaking down
  PCS points out that Jobcentre Plus staff have been transferred from processing claims to answering phones and that a backlog of unprocessed claims for Jobseeker’s Allowance has built up. This could help explain why unemployment went up at the same time as the number of claimants went down in the latest official employment statistics.

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Anjum Klair

Following on from my post on Monday, further details have become available on cuts in children’s services. Nursery World yesterday reported on the proposals by Westminster City Council to cut more than £5.4m from children’s services, including almost £1.7m from early intervention provision. The plans suggest the cuts could be made by ‘improving the targeting’ of early intervention, and that £675,000 could be saved over two years by reducing the provision of specialist services for children with special educational needs.

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• ippr – Institute for Public Policy Research
  IPPR warns of an employment double dip.
• Earnings growth of 2.1% while inflation heads for 5%
  Analysis from IDS shows that high inflation and lower earnings growth mean that most employees have seen a 3% reduction in the value of their pay.

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Anjum Klair

Further to 2,000 jobs being axed at Manchester City Council, it was announced today that more than 2,000 jobs are to be cut at two county councils. This adds to the depressing unemployment figures announced today.

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Nicola Smith

I have a post up at Left Foot Forward discussing today’s concerning labour market figures.

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Nicola Smith

Today at PMQs the Prime Minister claimed that the Future Jobs Fund didn’t work because “it lasted for six months and within one month 50% of those taking part were back on benefits”. The claim seems to be based on this analysis, recently published by DWP. The research is full of caveats (about which more below) but it does seem that David Cameron has chosen to give its conclusions a particularly negative spin – our reading is that while the study only represents very early data, it demonstrates that FJF significantly increased disadvantaged young people’s chances of moving into work.

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Philip Pearson

 Plans from the “greenest government ever” to privatise England’s forests  challenge not just the livelihood of some 3,300 employees of the Forestry Commission, but the sustainable management of our forest heritage. As “carbon sinks”, forests absorb and store CO2 in the atmosphere – 15 million tonnes of CO2 a year in the UK alone. There appears to have been no climate change impact assessment of this proposal. Why not?

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