Economic Roundup

The Resolution Foundation have been summing up the prospects since BREXIT. Adam Corlett has this to say:

We have seen more tightening of the labour market, with unemployment falling to a 10.5 year low. Underemployment and long-term unemployment are back to pre-crisis levels, while participation rates – including for groups with traditionally low rates – are at record highs.

Nonetheless, productivity growth has remained weak, and real employee pay growth was 1.7% in July, still below the pre-crisis average despite low inflation. With self-employment rising sharply in recent years, our ‘Spotlight’ focuses on how self-employment earnings are faring. There are signs of recovery, but rewards are still far below pre-crisis levels even accounting for large changes in the make-up of the self-employed.

Our earnings breakdown suggests that changes in the make-up of the workforce are increasingly supporting average wage growth, and that the exclusion of the self-employed from earnings statistics continues to be a key omission.

Our analysis of pay pressures and slack shows that un- and under-employment fell again in Q2 2016, back to pre-crisis levels. But we also lift the lid on large differences between age groups. As a leading indicator of pay growth, job mobility has been broadly flat and remains considerably below its post-2000 peak.

Our review of longer-term labour market health and efficiency continues to present a mixed bag. Participation has risen still further, including for low-participation groups, but weak productivity growth and little progress on training intensity and the share of graduates doing non-graduate roles remain key long-term challenges.

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Living not so far from Felixstowe we continue to marvel at the development of containerships. The amount of traffic certainly gives an indication of how robust the economy is: