Nicola Smith

Last November the Chancellor reported that:

private sector job creation would “far outweigh” the job losses in the public sector.

And earlier this year a superficial look at the labour market figures suggested that he could be right: unemployment fell by 80,000 and economists attempted to understand how zero growth could possibly have led to net job creation.

As the months went on the government became ever more optimistic of success, and in April 2011 DWP Minister Chris Grayling welcomed rising private sector employment and a fall in the overall number of people unemployed as a “step in the right direction”.

We have always been concerned that these claims were overstated, with rising levels of part-time work (particularly part-time self-employment) and persistently high unemployment demonstrating that all was not well. But today’s figures show just how far from a labour market recovery we really are.

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Helen Nadin

Steve Webb indicated last week that the Government is going to examine risk-sharing. Risk-sharing is the shorthand for the pensions landscape between defined benefit and defined contribution schemes, where risk can be shared between employers and members, or between members, and it can exist in a range of forms, many of which are already possible and in existence in the UK.

He said

“once we’ve gone from the DB extreme where the employer shoulders all the risk, to the DC extreme where it’s all borne by the member, hopefully we can push it back a little bit.”

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Philip Pearson

Why is there a “green blind spot” in the new ACAS study of the role of unions in future workplace relations? Have we failed to spread the word about union-led green workplace projects? Or has the conciliation service missed a growing union trend?

At the TUC’s annual Congress today, construction union, UCATT, spoke in support of a motion on the low carbon economy. UCATT is playing a leading role in Wakefield District Housing in support of an ambitious homes energy efficiency programmes, in the social housing sector where it is perhaps needed most. Prospect, the union for 68,000 scientists and engineers, reported that the Government has shown a cavalier disregard for expert advice on the environment and green investment. And Community called today for greater investment in energy efficient technology in industries like steel.

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Sarah Veale

It may sound like a chapter from a dry history book but the “Swedish” derogation caused some interest at Congress today. Reference was made to it in an Emergency Motion from Unite, who are concerned about its impact on agency workers, and indeed other workers, in the UK. So what is it?

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Richard Exell

Growth is slowing down across the globe, this spells gloom for the government’s economic strategy. Today the OECD published their Composite Leading Indicators for industrialised and large emerging economies, showing the global economy performing under par. The CLIs are designed to give 6 months’ advance notice of turning points in the business cycle, by measuring whether an economy is growing faster or slower than its long-term trend. The UK economy has been classified as in a “slowdown” for some time, and last month the Indicators suggested “possible peaks” for that the OECD area as a whole, the seven largest economies and the USA.

In this month’s figures, the CLIs for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, China and India point “more strongly to a slowdown in economic activity. The CLIs for the United States and Russia are now also pointing more clearly to a slowdown in economic activity than in last month’s assessment.” In fact, of the large economies the OECD covers in its monthly report, only Japan’s is not classified as in a slowdown.

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Ben Moxham

DFID has just launched its new trade advocacy fund to help poor countries better participate in trade negotiations. The fund is welcome, but it’s missing a vital component: it doesn’t support those often marginalised by trade liberalisation – from workers to smallholder farmers – to have their voices heard during trade talks.

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Brendan Barber

Last month, as our cities burned amidst the worst rioting in decades, social divisions in modern Britain were laid bare. The violence and the criminality that we saw shocked us all, and none of us would seek to justify or condone it in any way.

And the victims were overwhelmingly frightened ordinary people in working class communities – with the police and emergency service workers called on to put their safety on the line to restore order.

The Prime Minister chose to describe these events as ‘criminality pure and simple’. But it isn’t so simple and what happened in August actually revealed deep fractures within our society.

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Nicola Smith

Today’s IFS report sets out the scale of the living standards falls that families across the UK are set to experience in the years ahead. The impacts are significant, with the consequences of public spending cuts and tax rises on UK household incomes set to be felt for up to 10 years and with households having already experienced a 3.5% fall in median net household income in the year to April, the largest drop since 1981.  As our own research showed last week, for an average household the living standards gap is likely to be equivalent to a loss of £4,600 a year by 2013.

But a key question, as was put to me as I Woke Up to Money this morning, is whether these living standards falls are inevitable.

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Nigel Stanley

Right-wing think tank Civitas has what looks like a very interesting report out today – interesting because it comes from the right. If the press release is accurate it is a devastating attack on the private pensions industry and a call for the state to be more active. In other words the kind of thing I might write, although I’d probably do it somewhat more politely.

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Brendan Barber

The Vickers team have been asked how to make the banks safe, but the real question is how we make them useful.

Tougher capital requirements and ring-fencing will be bitterly opposed by the banks, who will now lobby hard to water them down. They should be resisted.

But while we need to avoid another finance-driven crash, safer banking on its own will not help drive the investment and create the jobs we need. Indeed, unless we take other action tougher capital controls could even limit credit at a time when businesses complain they cannot get affordable loans.

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