Since 2010 the UK economy has created an average of 800 jobs a day

Despite covid lockdowns, despite the war in Ukraine, despite destructive Bank of England policy creating a big inflation then seeking to create a small recession, unemployment has gone lower over the last 14 years and many jobs have been created.

Remain said Brexit would mean big job losses. It meant the reverse. The UK ran out of workers and turned to inviting in even more people to take all the extra jobs. Today this presents a better opportunity. Instead of inviting in so many to do relatively low paid jobs we need to cut back severely on legal migration. The government has promised to cut 300,000 but more should be the aim. We need a full commitment to a better paid more engaged UK workforce, armed with more investment to support higher productivity. The higher wages need to be earned.

Physical jobs require fuller automation to take the delays and hard work out of the tasks. Clerical tasks need more AI based automation to tackle all the repetitious and tedious parts of the old jobs.

Labour governments of the past have always left office with unemployment higher. Their boom/bust policies in the 1970s, and in the late 2000s threw too many people out of work. It is good unemployment remains low and job creation has been strong, but we need to do better with raising wages and productivity with the right training, machine support and investment. Public  sector productivity has fallen. There should be an immediate ban on external recruitment into the civil service and public administration.

104 Comments

  1. BW
    March 5, 2024

    Public sector productivity has fallen!! We need to ask why it takes The Office of the Public Guardian 90 days and counting to register a simple power of attorney. No point in calling them, even their answerphone unashamedly tells you. Submitted mid December and still waiting. Could it be working (or resting) from home or maybe they are on their laptop on a beach in Benidorm.

    1. Everhopeful
      March 5, 2024

      All of the above and maybe they have paid £squillions for a new computer system?
      That would help to gum up the works!

      1. Hope
        March 6, 2024

        I presume all these 800 jobs a day also get universal credit because your party imports low paid dross by the million each year? Is this why community charge has to be hiked to subsidise the millions you import each year! What is their carbon footprint?

        I am sick of paying for the incompetence socialism by your party.

    2. Lifelogic
      March 5, 2024

      Probate is a disaster too as is the tax office. The police largely a sick joke. They do nothing for shop lifting and have solved no burglaries at all in nearly 50% of all regions. Totally unable to deal with or deter crime. You say they promise to reduce legal immigration by 300,000 but they have kept non of their promises for 14 years. What is a value of a Tory promise on anything?

      Latest polls suggest a richly deserved Tory wipe out. with well under 100 MP. Labour clearly even worse but these Tories are so rightly despised for their lies and incompetence.

      Jeremy Hunt in his Sunday BBC interview:- “The most un-conservative thing I could do would be to cut taxes by increasing borrowing.”

      Surely rather more un-conservative still is borrowing (and currency debasing money printing with QE) while increasing taxes hugely and then wasting the proceeds on damaging and pointless things like lockdowns, net harm vaccines, the net zero lunacy, crony capitalism, HS2, loans for worthless degrees, open door low skilled immigration, corrupt PPE procurement, pushing heat pumps, renewables, carbon capture, wood burning at Drax and EVs… In short what the Tories have been doing under Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak for 14 years. Thus giving us the highest taxes for 70 years combined with truly dire and still declining public services like the dire NHS, lack of law and order, housing shortages…

    3. Ian wragg
      March 5, 2024

      And since coming into government 800 people a day have been imported.

    4. Ian wragg
      March 5, 2024

      Probate taking twice as long as a year ago. Simple bank account closure, 15 weeks and heard nothing. Inheritance tax due soon so a bank loan will be necessary
      Scandalous.

    5. Bloke
      March 5, 2024

      The list of services malfunctioning has become vast.
      They’ve being degenerating so long that many folk now tolerate bad service as normal.

    6. Mickey Taking
      March 5, 2024

      All those additional CS jobs, millions of zero-hours pretence jobs, quangos, peers, wonderful growth.

    7. Peter
      March 5, 2024

      ‘… boom/bust policies in the 1970s, and in the late 2000s threw too many people out of work.’

      Thatcher famously surveyed the scene of abandoned factories and industrial wastelands. Places like Middlesbrough never recovered. The reasonably paid industrial jobs that were lost were never replaced with sound alternatives. The numbers of ‘economically inactive’ soared and the social fabric disintegrated – crime, drugs etc.

      All our oil revenues frittered away. Other countries now supply goods we used to manufacture.

      There’s not much in it between Labour and Conservative really.

  2. DOM
    March 5, 2024

    I suggest the abolition of state driven ideological control of private sector companies (unnecessary burdens due to DEI and NZ authoritarianism). Florida under De Santis have already abolished DEI regulations.

    I ignore the assertion from Tory MPs that they are defenders of private sector commerce. It is this party in government no doubt endorsed by Tory backbenchers and their Labour captors that have nodded through this pernicious, Neo-Marxist control culture whose purpose is to replace merit with identity in recruitment policy. Hardly private sector zealots

    We have a Parliament and a bureaucracy comprised of those who actively promote total control of our private sector and those like Tory MPs who quiver in fear about opposing the Left’s campaign to shackle our companies with more cultural GARBAGE

    And by the way, extremism is anything the state wants it to mean. Don’t be surprised to see the voice of tens of millions of British citizens criminalised in the next 5 years with the stroke of a pen and a nod through the lobbies in Parliament. A hatred of freedom and speech now infects the inner sanctum of our politics and our governing class

    I predict that criticism of all and any govt policy will become illegal punishable by fines and imprisonment if Labour gain power and the Tories will say nowt

    1. Wanderer
      March 5, 2024

      +1 DOM. Sunak’s speech about Galloway’s win in Rochdale was telling. Democracy? Can’t have that if it doesn’t produce the results the elites want, pal.

    2. BOF
      March 5, 2024

      DOM
      Already a man has been given a two year prison sentence for putting up stickers for what would previously been free speech. Now a crime. Meanwhile a child rapist gets a community service order.

    3. Everhopeful
      March 5, 2024

      How many years I wonder for sticking up pro-Tory posters on central London lamp posts?
      Politicians should be very careful what they wish for.

    4. MPC
      March 5, 2024

      Quite a prediction. My own prediction is even more short term: that GB News will be OFCOMed out of existence in 2 to 3 years.

      1. Mitchel
        March 6, 2024

        GB News is clearly looking to the American market for it’s future,I would say.

        Their coverage is appallingly unbalanced and superficial.They have no Foreign Affairs editor yet spew out neo-con and hasbara propaganda.

        Hopefully something better will take its place.

    5. Ian B
      March 5, 2024

      @DOM – well said

    6. Jim+Whitehead
      March 5, 2024

      DOM, ++++
      Excellent comment, and so much that matters is there in your very first sentence.
      Fundamentals, like common sense itself, are so seldom consulted, seemingly never by the left and conveniently ignored by many on what was once the right.

  3. ChrisS
    March 5, 2024

    What about the freeze on public sector pay and the damage that has caused?

    Reply There is no freeze

    1. Sir Joe Soap
      March 5, 2024

      Indeed. Keep putting business taxes up to pay the public sector more! Master plan!

    2. a-tracy
      March 5, 2024

      They move up within the grades, they also give extra holidays which I think is causing a lot of productivity problems because not only are you paying the person with the additional days off paid per year you also need a lot of substitute workers to do the jobs, doubling the costs.

    3. Lifelogic
      March 5, 2024

      Well junior doctors have had a real term pay cut of well over 20% in this period.

      Net immigration of 750,000 is 2,000 a day (so 800 extra jobs a day is not very impressive) what are the other 1200 a day living on? Other people taxes I assume. Indeed many of the people working are paid low ages so depend on benefits too.

      1. Hope
        March 6, 2024

        It is not 750,000 net. 1.395 low paid visas entered the country. The govt has No control over who leaves. Those that do are based on an estimate. The current govt target is to reduce by 300,000 reduces to over a million each year!
        63,000 criminals who entered the country were given amnesties without proper checks.

  4. Mark B
    March 5, 2024

    Good morning.

    We have created a country that serves itself rather than one that makes and sells things to other countries. The jobs created are really non-jobs, like Diversity Managers. In other words, as the Private Sector has shrunk due to government de-industrialisation policies, the State Public Sector has grown.

    The Snake is eating its own tail.

    1. Everhopeful
      March 5, 2024

      lol
      And the crocodile is eating those who fed it with such enthusiasm.

    2. Sir Joe Soap
      March 5, 2024

      Yes it’s easy to create extra jobs when you employ a mixture of more demand via immigration and regulation, lower productivity and print money. It’s a golden jobs era for jobsworths! What could go wrong?

    3. Bloke
      March 5, 2024

      Imagine 86% of watch repairers were Welsh men and 89% of sewing machinists were Scottish women.
      A Diversity Manager should train and work to be a good as they are instead of being paid to tamper and mix things up like a bunch of allsorts.

    4. glen cullen
      March 5, 2024

      Almost every taxi driver, food delivery driver, nail polisher, car-washer, barber, mini-market shop, unknown slavery and sex-worker is a foreigner …are these the 800 jobs a day

      1. glen cullen
        March 5, 2024

        or maybe the new 800 jobs per day are all the promised green net-zero jobs ?

    5. Ian B
      March 5, 2024

      @Mark B +1 the wonders of offshoring

    6. BOF
      March 5, 2024

      Aptly put, Mark B.

    7. Timaction
      March 5, 2024

      Nut zero driven by the Chinese exports our manufacturing under their religion, to import the same inferior goods back produced by coal powered stations and sent around the world in dirty CO2 producing ships. Madness. Importing 1.3 million a year, every year, mostly minimum wage workers, invited to bring their families to be immediately subsidised by the 46% of net tax payers. Highest numbers ever not working between the ages of 16-64. Mostly claiming mental health complaints. Highest taxation ever. Highest waiting lists on the NHS. We don’t need to wonder why. Worst housing crisis ever. Worst public service delivery ever/ Non equality laws, DIE, ESG woke laws everywhere. White Englishmen discriminated against in their own Country as they’re not “special”! Meritocracy denied on the alter of woke and numbers. On and on. Just what have the Tory’s actually delivered and what are the Tory’s going to campaign on? The Labour Party will be worse??

    8. Original Richard
      March 5, 2024

      Mark B :

      Correct.

      All these “green jobs” simply make energy more expensive and reduce everyone’s standard of living as a consequence.

      It was the availability of cheap, abundant, high energy density and reliable energy which created the Industrial Revolution leading to improved living standards.

      There is no benefit to employing more people to make less energy. Net Zero is designed to bring about impoverishment.

  5. Wanderer
    March 5, 2024

    “Physical jobs require fuller automation to take the delays and hard work out of the tasks. Clerical tasks need more AI based automation to tackle all the repetitious and tedious parts of the old jobs”.

    Try telling that to the people doing these jobs. They’ve got the nouse/hard experience to tell you that all this does is consign them to the unemployment scrapheap or lower their wages/opportunities as they have to compete against machines and AI.

    I’ve experienced it from both sides, as a manager wanting to reduce the body count, and as a skilled worker being reduced to the drudgery of serving a machine.

  6. Mickey Taking
    March 5, 2024

    Registered unemployment figures are a joke. Losing a job means getting Job Seekers allowance which might take up costs of travel to interviews etc. With no success there, Universal Credit has replaced several other payments, but cannot be claimed for various reasons, so the unemployed will remain unregistered.
    The numbers are false and actually lower than reality.

  7. David Andrews
    March 5, 2024

    I fear you may be correct in your prediction. A fightback against such authoritarianism is long overdue. It will not come from the two main political parties let alone the smaller ones represented in parliament. As you point out, De Santis has taken a stand against DEI. The US Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to overturn the state of Colorado’s attempt to ban Trump from standing for President in the state is an important signal against weaponising the law against political opponents.

  8. agricola
    March 5, 2024

    You are selectively correct. We may have high employment but much of it must be just keeping people off government benefits. There are suposedly around one million vacancies for jobs we lack the skills base to fill. Restrictive practices, by whom or for what reason I know not, have kept us short of medical staff. I would force much greater home creation and halt international poaching. Virtually uncontrolled legal migration has overloaded our infrastructure and is fast erasing our culture. It has to stop.

    It is all proped up by a grotesquely overloaded, with unnecessary regulation and tax, private sector. Unleash it, and rewrite the tax book, 500 pages in Hongkong, 20,000 pages in the UK. Return the CS to essential numbers, rewrite their contract, and fill the skills gap from outside. Wage a war on woke and diversity, they are the Hamas of the economy. Rewrite our energy business plan it is killing the economy and penalising too many already impoverished individuals. Equate nett zero with Covid and vaccinate against it using science engineering and logic.

    Measure our success by how fast our people rise up the personal GDP table from the low of 21st in the World. A third class state position. If you suffer any illusions look around you at the decay.

    There is much else that could be said, but I am not writing a book. Tomorrow we can judge if Hunt understands the task and has any solutions.

  9. Richard1
    March 5, 2024

    Judging by the leaks and briefings it looks like the tax cuts to be announced in the budget will be ‘paid for’ by tax rises or new taxes elsewhere. There is even talk of the chancellor adopting Labour’s bad policy of abolishing non dom status. Do we think multi millionaire foreigners will just sit here while they get half their global income taken by the U.K. state and are subject to 40% inheritance tax when the alternative almost everywhere else is zero? It’s a toughie I know, but even the treasury’s static model ought to be capable of being programmed to figure that one out.

  10. Old Albion
    March 5, 2024

    Quote Since 2010 the UK economy has created an average of 800 jobs a day Endquote.
    Yet we still have circa 2 million unemployed. I wonder why ?
    We need ‘net zero’
    Immigration that is.

    1. Timaction
      March 5, 2024

      1.6 million immigrants on welfare, not counting illegals. Robbing us the 46% to pay for this madness. No one ever goes back after contracts or deported. 1.6 % of boat people deported, no one taken back to France after rescue, why? No legal obligation to bring them here by RNLI or Border Farce. We’re being had and lied to by the Uni Party.

      1. Hope
        March 6, 2024

        The boat people not rescued on the French side of the channel, but a meter into our side collected and taken to UK! Spooked the UK also knows exactly where the collection point is! Cleverly then pays France even more of our taxes to keep the scam going!

  11. Lynn Atkinson
    March 5, 2024

    Employers can’t compete with the government when it comes to U.K. low paid (this translates to very high pay elsewhere) jobs.
    As a result low earners depend on the state and stay home. The new immigrants do the ‘low paid work’ until they too can get the low pay or even higher pay, free on the dole. This frees up their job for a new immigrant.
    As the population of non-working people expands, taxes increase to pay for them. And this merry-go-round never stops. An oyster farm owner explained to me that they were voting Remain not only because they had university degrees but because they needed immigrants to pack oysters. They could not attract the local population. When I asked if her taxes were ever increasing and did she know why, her inquisitive university-educated-brain had not ventured that far.
    I’m not sure how much more the legitimate economy can take, but I’m quite sure that the black economy is booming – no ‘bust’ there as no politician is involved.
    Maybe Britain would be best off ditching the political-controlled and exploited economy and just let the whole state go bankrupt. That would release more workers into the wealth creating economy.

    1. a-tracy
      March 6, 2024

      Councils are going bankrupt. Birmingham in particular is ‘Europe’s largest local authority’. I was always told large means economies of scale, there are supposed to be cost advantages, and productivity is supposed to become more efficient. Is it time to split these overlarge authorities down to size that people can manage because these highly paid Managers of massive organisations have failed. There is obviously too much bureaucracy, residents aren’t seeing the economies of scale.

      The auditors should compare how much they spend on taxis (From April 2020 to July 2023, invoice data suggests the council paid all school taxi firms a total of £128million – nearly £12m in 2020, £27m in 2021, £52.3m in 2022 and £36.9m this year until July.30 Oct 2023. BirminghamLive said ” a taxi firm is allegedly charging the council £200-a-day to take a child three miles to school” ) than a smaller Council -v- the number of pupils served and distances travelled.
      Michelle Dewberry discussed their Oracle IT disaster last night, spiralling budgets and disastrous implementation. The IT problems have been blamed for not being able to monitor its budget, what a load of rubbish a notepad, calculator and a pencil could achieve that.

      Could the Council do what lots of big companies do and go bankrupt, split the Council down and write off the action that could cost a billion pounds.

  12. Everhopeful
    March 5, 2024

    Why didn’t they take people off benefits and give them jobs?
    It isn’t as if anyone does jobs efficiently and well any more.
    And PLEASE spare us more AI.
    I at least would prefer SOME things to work!
    And I’m certain that sitting at home twiddling thumbs on benefits gets pretty tedious.

  13. James Freeman
    March 5, 2024

    To create a better-skilled and more productive workforce, you must expand work-based training opportunities for low-skilled and young people. This change costs money. But, you could fund it by stopping poor-quality degrees where the loans never get repaid.

    I do not see this happening under Conservative or Labour governments. But best of luck trying.

  14. Narrow Shoulders
    March 5, 2024

    That is 4 million jobs – how many immigrants have been let in?

    Ah so more Brits out of work is the upshot.

    Doing something wrong in the round I would suggest.

  15. R.Grange
    March 5, 2024

    ‘The UK ran out workers’. I think you mean ran out of people prepared to do long hours of mind-crushing work for poverty-line pay, Sir John. Labour, and even more so your government, opened the doors to third-world migrants who were willing to do that work.

    1. Mickey Taking
      March 5, 2024

      or those who say they will ?

    2. a-tracy
      March 6, 2024

      R Grange, what do you think the underused skills are of the people refusing to do “mind-crushing work”.

      What is your definition of “mind-crushing work” which five jobs do you have in mind?

      1. R.Grange
        March 6, 2024

        How about meat-packing? I don’t fancy it, nor I expect do you. Not sure why you say 5 jobs.

        1. a-tracy
          March 7, 2024

          I wondered if you could think of five “mind-crushing” jobs. You assumed correctly that I wouldn’t like to work in an abattoir, but I have friends who do and have done since leaving school.

          There weren’t as many mental health problems with this job when we had thousands of abattoirs around the UK, and the number of animals killed in them wasn’t as high per day/per capita as it is now in the large, often foreign-owned abattoirs.

          Men used to hunt, kill and prepare meat, we still like to eat meat. Do you think this job will be done completely by machine in the future to wipe the job out?

  16. Roy Grainger
    March 5, 2024

    On migration … “The government has promised to cut 300,000”

    The Conservatives you mean, who you represent. In your last election manifesto, which you campaigned on, you promised that overall immigration numbers would reduce and instead the exact opposite happened and numbers have increased massively. Your promises are worthless. That’s not the only promise in the manifesto you have ignored. Why should we vote for you based on another set of promises you will also ignore ?

  17. RDM
    March 5, 2024

    “The higher wages need to be earned.”, Totally agree, as long as we understand it’s context! Currently, large number of People cannot cover the cost to live! Energy costs, Fuel, Taxes?

    I also agree with you’re Remedy;

    “but we need to do better with raising wages and productivity with the right training, machine support and investment.”!

    Please, remember there are a large number of the ex-self employed that have left the work force (800,000+)! These People value Self Determination above all, including money! They will NOT be employed! So, Reforms are needed, and they need to be part of you’re Remedy!

    So, please support the Self Employed, Contractors, Owner Drivers, and Family SME’s, with Reforms to simplify Accountancy Rules, incorporation rules (Move to more sole Traders), IR35, simplify Taxes (Fixed Rate?),…

    But, there may others areas, Reforms that would support productivity: HGV Reforms; Move to, and simplify, Owner Drivers with one truck, reducing operating cost, increasing specialisation, etc,…

    Please note; The Operators License is aimed at Fleet Management, not the One Truck Owner Driver, who does not care for any, if not all, that is taught on obtaining those licenses. No help what so ever! It’s just a means to restrict entry! Very expensive jobs for the boys at RHA!

    Then, general Supply-side Reforms (Cost of Employment, cost to Start-up/loans),…

    Cheap Energy Strategy, Fracking,…

    You (Conservative Party) will need to recognise (Votes) the need to support high valued manufacturing, like Primary Steel Making (Port Talbot), because it keeps large sections of People off State Dependency (Benefits/UC), and paying mortgages! Steel, Opencast mining, Fracking, etc,…

    Any one saying we can all move into AI, Automation, “Green Jobs”, is what it is! Bullshit by Politicians that don’t have a clue, they just want to make cuts and sell it all off, with no understanding of the consequences! See Labour Party in Wales, and Devolution!

    BR

    RDM

  18. Magelec
    March 5, 2024

    And how many productive and national security jobs have been lost?

  19. Bloke
    March 5, 2024

    The UK will be a healthier, happier and more successful country when our own people work efficiently to look after their own interests.
    Continuously importing overseas workers to patch up defects creates more growing in concrete over our once green and pleasant land.

  20. Javelin
    March 5, 2024

    More low paid jobs is BAD for the economy.

    If the tax created by the job is less than the tax consumed by the person and their family then we are turning into a society with a low standard of living.

    1. Javelin
      March 5, 2024

      “Runaway deculturalisation.”

      As people from different cultures get into positions of power they use their power to change the culture to a “lower quality”, possibly more corrupt and more chaotic state.

      For example we are seeing immigrants in the home office enabling mass migration by giving 80%+ of economic migrants visas. This creates a momentum for a runaway cycle of a bigger pull of low paid, low skilled workers creating lower quality of life reflecting the lower “quality” (e.g. less educated) cultures.

      Quite when this momentum will stop will be determined by a counter momentum such as higher crime or high taxes causing the collapse of the Governments credit rating and increase in interest rates and decrease in growth. Though I have no reason to believe it well never stop until we reach an apocalypse of either death, war, famine, disease.

    2. Mickey Taking
      March 5, 2024

      exactly what has been going on for years.

  21. Cliff..Wokingham.
    March 5, 2024

    Sir John,
    I suppose that’s one way of interpreting it. If all was as well as you suggest, we wouldn’t be Twenty-seven percent behind in the polls.
    In my opinion, no matter what Mr Hunt announces in this week’s budget, we’re toast. The party needs to prepare for a period in opposition and then eventually, a return to government in five or ten years time, with the country in an even worse state than it is now.
    We need to return to our roots namely, being a Conservative Party again with Conservative leaders and policies.

    1. Timaction
      March 5, 2024

      How could anyone ever trust any Tory promise or intention? Einstein stupidity theory applies.

  22. Berkshire Alan
    March 5, 2024

    Just imagine how much better we would have done if the attack on self employment and businesses. with the non stop tax and regulation policy increases had not been applied by Government..

  23. Brian Tomkinson
    March 5, 2024

    Over the last 2 years net migration has been over 1750 per day not counting those here illegally.

  24. Nigl
    March 5, 2024

    Irrelevant if all/many have gone into the wealth destroying public sector. Decrepit/decaying public services, clunky not fit for purpose, out of date IT systems, 4 ex 10 councils going or in danger of going bankrupt.

    All at a time when both tax and borrowing are at their highest.

    That’s your legacy.

  25. glen cullen
    March 5, 2024

    We should rejoice at high numbers in employment but highlight the 1.32 million 2023 unemployed and the estimated UNHRC 0.5 million refugees and asylum seekers 2022 in the UK ….we can double those figures and add a million for the illegal unrecorded black-market workers and illegal over-stayers

  26. Ian B
    March 5, 2024

    “government has promised”?? more promises!, haven’t we heard them before?

  27. J+M
    March 5, 2024

    There are 5 million people of working age not working. Many of these are on long term ill-health benefits. These people need to be got back to work.

    As for the civil service, how about dismissing all those recruited during and since Covid? The pre-existing workforce was clearly more productive.

    1. Mickey Taking
      March 6, 2024

      Find them the jobs?

  28. majorfrustration
    March 5, 2024

    What happened to all those apprenticeships that were going to be created. Just another promise/soundbite

  29. hefner
    March 5, 2024

    ons.gov.uk 03/2024 ‘Employment in the UK: February 2024’.
    One has to be a politician to spin a story like the one presented to us this morning. And given that Sir John practically never gives us his sources nobody can check his assertions. And he pretends to give us a ‘scientific’ view: so 800 jobs a day for 23 years equals about 6.7 m jobs.
    Even if this figure is true what is the salary/income distribution for these 6.7 m new ‘workers’? How much have they contributed to the UK GDP, GDP per capita? How many have brought new investment to the country? How many are in services? In manufacturing?

    Or is the 800 jobs/day since 2010 the new blah blah blah pushed today by the CP?
    Or alternatively is Sir John now among the b***ends denounced by the retiring Paul Scully MP in the Daily Mail?

    Reply My source for 800 jobs a day is the Chancellor

    1. Mickey Taking
      March 5, 2024

      reply to reply ….or the OBR? About as reliable as Putin’s commentary on war in Ukraine.

    2. Timaction
      March 5, 2024

      The Chancellor? Ha ha ha ha. I’m sorry Sir John, um I have a bridge for sale if you’re interested?

    3. Martin in Bristol
      March 6, 2024

      Another duff post from you hefner.
      Not very scientific.

    4. a-tracy
      March 6, 2024

      From April 2024, the minimum wage is going up from £10.42 to £11.44 per hour from the age of 21. That is an increase for an average (37.5 hour) week of + £38.25 or £1989 pa (nearly £2k increase). Although I predict a lot of people could be having their hours cut to 35 (two 15 minute tea breaks or an extended staggered lunch breaks so you don’t need extra staff). We’re told this is what people want: more work/LIFE balance; there has been considerable achievement on this mission since 1998.

      It won’t end low pay as the Chancellor claims as people are expecting differentials to be matched at nearly 10%, State pensions have also increased to the dismay of a lot of people on the left who want to scrap the triple lock.

  30. Sea_Warrior
    March 5, 2024

    I see that it would only cost about £270 million to extend capital allowances to the leased-equipment favoured by our smaller businesses (source ‘The Sunday Times’). That’s one productivity-improving change I want to see in tomorrow’s budget.

  31. agricola
    March 5, 2024

    Please have words in the ear of whichever minister is responsible for our postal electeral system. Galloway is the latest example of its weaknesses.

    It should be for UK citizens living overseas, members of HM armed forces, those hospitalised or in care homes unable to get to the ballot box. It is not meant for tribal voting led by community sectarian leaders. The minister needs to end the practise which is anti democratic and encourages sectarian politics.

  32. Ian B
    March 5, 2024

    Last year, GDP per capita for the average Briton was £39,400; for the average American it was £64,700 – a gap of £25,300.
    The number of UK civil servants, likewise, has risen from 417,000 in 2016 to 529,000 in Q3 2023; the number of other UK public sector administrators has risen from 590,000 to 656,000 over the same period.
    Could it be the Conservative Governments policy, as that is what it is a ‘policy’, of offshoring UK Industry for personal self-gratification that keeps the UK slipping away to obscurity?
    The number of UK civil servants, likewise, has risen from 417,000 in 2016 to 529,000 in Q3 2023; the number of other UK public sector administrators has risen from 590,000 to 656,000 over the same period. The total number employed in UK public services has risen from 5.4 million at its lowest point in 2018 to 5.9 million in Q3 2023. – I take that to mean the Taxpayer is paying subsidising £5.9 million people. Delivery has declined under this Conservative Government. The British Empire, love it or hate it, was the controlling of 412million people covering 23% of the World, and it took just 4,000 administrators.
    Could it be the push for Discrimination (Diversity, Inclusion, Equalities) by this Conservative Government, coupled with the lack of interest in controlling expenditure, that is behind the personal self-gratification of empire building that is causing the rot?
    The Country for the most part takes its lead from their elected Government; they do what those at the top do – because it is seen as the direction that is being orchestrated. Those that don’t leave.
    On Balance it looks like this Conservative Government has created all the employment growth, with jobs-for-the- boys and new empires all on the back of the Taxpayer

  33. Paula
    March 5, 2024

    Are you sure about these jobs ?

    Because I’m in the market for work and I’m signed up with agencies and though they put through a lot of jobs to me they rarely result in an interview and when I do turn up for an interview there is often no notification that I failed to get the job.

    The way I did find work was by direct approach to employers. The one I’m working for at the moment is still advertising even though it isn’t recruiting. Again, via agencies – which are a nightmare to deal with. Rude, neglectful and sending completely inappropriate job information (minimum wage 40 miles away or jobs I didn’t specify.)

    On the subject of the job I did get. It’s at the bare minimum of legal pay with bare minimum of legal conditions and there are young adults under 21 doing full shifts with leader responsibilities (including lock-up and taking keys home for the business) for under £8 an hour. This is not merely well below minimum or living wage but below eating wage.

    They are fast to put the prices up in the shop but certainly not the wages, which must be a gift to the execs in inflationary times.

    The young people would move on if they could but the advertised jobs aren’t actually there in reality.

    1. Hat man
      March 6, 2024

      Sounds grim. Paula, and sorry to hear what you’re having to cope with. At least it was good to hear about what the real world is like, rather than read a party political sourced from… Jeremy Hunt (!).

    2. Mickey Taking
      March 6, 2024

      sadly for you and millions Paula, this is what has been going on for years and getting worse under this Government. Flood the streets( hotels!) with immigrant labour and fill jobs at the lowest possible cost.
      The so-called high-skilled work has gone and employment that sometimes cheats minimum wage is what there is.

  34. Kenneth
    March 5, 2024

    The current government shows no signs of doing anything sensible with the economy

  35. Bert+Young
    March 5, 2024

    Many things are disproportionate to need ; outstanding is the Civil Service . Running the country efficiently is a responsible task and it needs effective and skilled management to do its job . The fault we are presently experiencing and have done so for several years lies at the foot of 10 Downing Street and its Cabinet . Vocalising in the Front Bench shows no sign of real follow up capability .

  36. Ian B
    March 5, 2024

    Rochdale Election votes

    2024 – Conservative 3,731
    2019 – Conservative 14,807

    From the Conservative Government and CCHQ, a good result the right people in place to take the Country into a GE – or is it we just give up, the slagging and innuendo isn’t working. May be the people have heard “the government has promised” and know what that means

  37. hefner
    March 5, 2024

    ‘We need a full commitment to a better paid more engaged UK workforce, armed with more investment to support higher productivity’. Who will commit to this? The State? The Government? The private sector? Who in the private sector? The one-person ‘enterprises’? The SMEs? The importers or the exporters? Where will the additional investment come from? The State? The present generation of entrepreneurs? FDI?
    If physical jobs are reduced by automation and clerical jobs by AI, what new jobs are these people so ‘liberated’ going to embrace? Who will provide ‘the right training, machine support and investment’?

    1. Martin in Bristol
      March 6, 2024

      13 question from you hefner in one post.
      Try google.

      1. hefner
        March 6, 2024

        14 and it is ‘questionS’.

  38. Chris S
    March 5, 2024

    As the EU calculated that every migrant we take in costs €250,000, we should cut job visas to the minimum : below 100,000pa. Some of the money saved should be spent on grants and 100% tax relief on investment in automation.

    We could free up over 200,000 jobs in the state sector alone every year, by ensuring it does less and automates more. We know fhis works : anyone who has applied for a driving licence or passport electronically knows just how simple and quick the process can be. That technology should be applied to every part of the public services. Remember, most of us can’t even get or change a medical appointment via email or the internet !

    The opportunities in the private sector to release staff to do more necessary jobs must be just as great, if not greater.

  39. Ralph Corderoy
    March 5, 2024

    ‘…unemployment has gone lower over the last 14 years…’

    Yes, but recently that’s because the unemployed aren’t put in the unemployed bucket for accounting. Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews of The Spectator have been raising this for a long time. ’5.6 million on out-of-work benefits’ is front and centre of the Spectator’s data tracker charts. ’Universal credit (workless)’ is where the unemployed are now hidden. It jumped 1.43 million between February and May ’20. And the total is now higher than then at 3.86 million in August ’23. https://data.spectator.co.uk

    1. Mickey Taking
      March 5, 2024

      Very large numbers of ex-workers no longer get Job Seekers, and can’t qualify for Universal (until penniless and facing out on the street)., More sleight of hand stats from this devious Governent.

      1. Mickey Taking
        March 6, 2024

        poor typing with the frustration.

  40. mancunius
    March 5, 2024

    “The UK ran out of workers.” It would be far more accurate to say the workers ran out of motivation, finding paid leisure an increasingly easy option.

  41. acorn
    March 5, 2024

    Fitch Ratings reckon UK households have £280 billion of “excess” savings accumulated during Covid lockdown, and are showing no signs of spending them in the next few years, unlike their US counterparts who are now driving US GDP at 3.2%. The UK M4 money stock of bank deposits (household M4 and national savings), is also about 10% higher than its pre-pandemic trend. This indicates the lack of confidence households and businesses have in the management of the UK economy. Historically, tax cuts in the UK tend to get saved not spent.

    Sadly, we are stuck with a Treasury and politicians that budget like a household does; as if it was a “user” of a foreign currency it had no control of. When it is a sovereign currency “issuer” with total control of it. This is no time to be bothering about debt to GDP. It is time to worry about the UK’s large persistent trade deficit.

  42. The Prangwizard
    March 5, 2024

    And how many people from abroad have been invited here or arrived anyway since 2010?

    Give us the figure so we can make a comparison.

  43. Dave Ceely
    March 5, 2024

    Britain is failing. The huge parasitic government has brought us massive taxes, gigantic payments to foster foreign wars, immigration that threatens not only our society but our physical safety, a legal system that seeks only to punish indigenous people, a health service that seeks to kill us with vaccines, an education system that produces woke half wits and little else, an economy that has fallen far behind Americas (which isn’t that great itself). The only good thing I’ve seen recently is that politicians are getting scared by their illegal immigrants to the point they’re too scared to even tell the truth about it. Maybe even the dumb sheeple are starting to hate the political class. About time I say.

  44. Ian B
    March 5, 2024

    Busiest day of the year for small boat Channel crossings
    More than 400 small boat migrants arrived in the UK yesterday – the highest number crossing the Channel in a day so far this year.
    Home Office figures show 401 people made the journey in seven boats, suggesting an average of around 41 people per boat.
    It comes after 327 migrants crossed the Channel on Sunday in eight boats, meaning 728 people were recorded arriving within 48 hours.
    The latest crossings take the provisional total number of UK arrivals so far this year to 2,983.

    This Conservative Government is openly promoting this criminal activity. You start to believe its how the wish to keep wage inflation down. They have refused the UK Parliament the right to be our sole legislator, they allow foreign courts to be the UK’s arbiter/ruler – so the boat will keep coming.

  45. Ian B
    March 5, 2024

    The common thread through out the Media
    “Hunt to cut National Insurance by 2p
    Jeremy Hunt will cut National Insurance by 2p in tomorrow’s Budget – after deciding a cut to income tax would be too expensive.”
    Clearly the press release is out, not speculation any more but a ‘will cut’. If any MP had doubts about the position of parliament in this dictatorship they now have their answer.

    1. Mickey Taking
      March 6, 2024

      underwhelmed is putting it mildly. A damp squib is what it would be.

  46. Reform_Now
    March 5, 2024

    800 jobs a day? And only 8,000 migrants a day to do them. How will business cope?

  47. MFD
    March 5, 2024

    We dont need anymore Jobs Sr John as the incoming boats of migrants are coming to hold their hands out for the free money they get told about by the foreign lawyers encouraging them to cross.

    We are taken for fools. I would give them neither food nor shelter , it only encourages more world trash.

  48. Derek
    March 5, 2024

    The UK has only “run out of workers” because of the crazy benefits system now in operation. Apparently, there are over 5 million of working age now claiming benefits, very many because of mental illnesses, AKA ‘depression’, which can be treated with daily tablets. So why aren’t many of them back to work?
    If any Government is going to get Britain back to work, it is going to have to address the burden of benefit payouts on the Exchequer and I believe this factor is the main cause of our GDP per Capita remaining so low.
    And to me, GDP per capita is a very good indicator of the success of any nation. Right now, we’re not succeeding.

  49. iain gill
    March 5, 2024

    I personally know of lots of jobs that have been created in the UK economy.

    All of them have been taken by immigrants, or off shored to virtual staff in India.

    So, this is not the success story you think it is for the long term British residents.

  50. glen cullen
    March 5, 2024

    In advance of the budget my petrol station has again put up the price of fuel, by another 1p today

    1. Original Richard
      March 5, 2024

      gc :

      Be grateful you can still buy petrol for your car. They’re working to destroy any private trnsport.

  51. Lindsay+McDougall
    March 5, 2024

    Unfortunately, a lot of the jobs created are unnecessary and overpaid jobs in the public sector. The key to generating economic growth is getting rid of a lot of these roles and cutting taxes to help SMEs.

  52. hefner
    March 5, 2024

    O/T, publications.parliament.uk 20/06/2023 ‘The role of Non-Executive Directors in Government – Report Summary’. Maybe those here who want the private sector to play a bigger role around/within the public service might want to read what these NEDs have already been doing since 2010.

    O/T-2, 28/02/2024 ‘The QE theory of everything’ Will Dunn, newstatesman.com: A more than interesting take on QE, and on when, why QT replaced QE and how Truss/Kwarteng did not see it coming.

  53. Robert Thomas
    March 6, 2024

    How many of these new jobs were civil service jobs ?

Comments are closed.