How does Boris Johnson save the economy?

‘For the first time since records began, there are fewer unemployed people than job vacancies,’ the ONS says. The number of unemployed people in January to March was 1,256,846 whereas vacancies in February to April 2022 rose to a new record of 1,295,000. At a time when we may already be in recession, and we certainly face it later this year, this is extraordinary.

Part of the explanation is that hundreds of thousands of people have voluntarily left the Labour market, as the Bank of England’s governor Andrew Bailey told MPs yesterday. One explanation is that large numbers of people have long Covid and cannot work. Others are clinically vulnerable and are choosing not to work because they don’t wish to take the health risk when Covid remains prevalent. Covid has therefore had the opposite long-term effect on the economy than was widely feared.

The greatest Covid risk was thought to be the collapse of businesses, mass long-term unemployment and a prolonged slump.