All #UK Stories

In the U.K., both wages and inflation came in hotter than expected. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate edged up and payroll jobs saw a steep decline, indicating a rapidly weakening labor market.

Advanced economies are facing shrinking workforces. But the recent immigration surge is now throwing off some older population forecasts.

The U.K.’s economic downturn is currently affecting “sitting-down jobs” much more than “standing-up jobs”. The U.K. labor market is experiencing a white-collar recession.

GDP data confirmed that the UK slipped into recession in the second half of 2023. The BoE needs to reverse course quickly or else face a more severe downturn.

Brexit may have created barriers to trading goods for the U.K., but it might also create an opportunity to become a service export superpower.

OECD countries have seen a surge in migration recently. In the future, expect permanently higher migration flows due to new factors at work.

Overall GDP growth in the U.K. has been steady, but the increase is driven by population growth, rather than productivity and income growth.

The United Kingdom's economic outlook is only slightly more uncertain than its current status, which is bad news for the central bank.

Will the proposed tax cuts from the U.K. government's actually boost economic growth or is their usefulness overstated in nominal terms?

Though more and more people are graduating from college, the U.K. labor market has a troubling graduate skill premium.

BoE officials have made it clear that they are now willing to sacrifice the labor market to bring down inflation, but the official numbers are unreliable.

The risks to quantitative easing are benign during anemic recoveries. In this period of high inflation, it could results in bad losses.

Corporate greed has been wrongly blamed for this bout of inflation. Greedflation isn't the problem. Excess growth and labor shortages are.

The story of the United Kingdom's economy lately has been one of disaster, but recent revisions may have changed the narrative.

The dysfunctional housing market in the United Kingdom prevents workers from moving to highly productive cities, leading to underperformance.

The UK's National Health System is stretched dangerously thin, with waiting lines so long people's lives are at risk. The lack of health services is also hurting the labor market.

The global manufacturing industry is being hurt by a shift in consumer preferences, especially in Europe.

Despite Brexit, the U.K. will remain a popular immigration destination, but the housing market will be a constraint moving forward. 

Higher interest rates are about to send U.K. mortgage rates soaring, aggravating the current cost-of-living crisis and the housing market.

The recession that was revised away: new economic projections from the BoE no longer show an upcoming downturn in the United Kingdom.

Unlike other advanced economies, the U.K. is experiencing particularly sticky inflation and the real possibility of a wage-price spiral.

The difference between the central bank and the OBR reflects diverging assumptions about employment, worker productivity, and business investment.

The post-pandemic labor market has been extremely tight with many vacancies left unfilled.

In the UK, consumer confidence and business sentiment are gradually increasing, as the economy continues to evade a massive downturn.

Economic growth in the United Kingdom depends on the strength of the labor force. But Brexit, demographic declines, and long-term health issues threaten that strength.

While soft and hard data are disconnected in other countries, the United Kingdom is doing just as poorly as workers and businesses believe.

The Bank of England's new economic projections show much less pessimism about the labor market and economic growth in the short term.

While a U.K. recession is highly likely, there is a lot of uncertainty on how deep and prolonged the economic downturn will be.

Even though the British economy is in a downturn, the labor market might hold up better this time than during the typical recession, especially since there is still a shortage of blue-collar jobs due to Brexit.

It’s been a turbulent week for the United Kingdom. Puzzling financial policy and political drama latched onto an ongoing energy crisis and a tight labour market, triggering volatility not seen in at least 20 years. 

Countries across the world are facing high inflation, economic fallout from a pandemic, and an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

Demand for workers is about 60% above its pre-COVID level. The paradox is that while the U.K. labour market is extremely ‘tight’ – a good thing for workers – those same workers are suffering from a cost of living crisis.

How does economic growth happen? It’s a hard question to answer but economists have tried for centuries. Perhaps the most famous model came from MIT economist Robert Solow in 1956. The Solow growth model specifies three factors that fuel growth: productivity, capital, and labor. 

Employers face stiff competition for workers amid labour shortages.