Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill had an unusually hard act to follow when he was appointed – after stints at Goldman Sachs, the European Central Bank and Harvard – to succeed the free-thinking Andy Haldane in 2021. Pill’s face is still not one most of us recognise, but he’s an interesting speechmaker and his latest, delivered in New York, is worth reading for its analysis of the UK’s labour market problem and its potential to prolong the current inflation.
In essence, he observed, the US has a tight labour market because its economy has surpassed pre-pandemic levels and may even be ‘overheating’. But the UK has not reached that benchmark and is afflicted (as indeed The Spectator was early to point out) by an unforeseen decline in participation rates among the working-age population, particularly 50- to 65-year-olds, either from choice or for long-term health reasons – exacerbated, though Pill does not say so, by extended NHS waiting lists.
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