David Cameron realised rather late on that the job miracle, rather than George Osborne’s dubious claims about deficit reduction, was the main economic boast of the last few years. And rightly: he is the first Prime Minister in the history of these islands to have presided over the creation of 1,000 jobs a day.
His detractors argue that this numbers thing is simply a function of immigration. That of the 2 million jobs he boasted about creating, 1m of them are foreign-born workers. This is broadly correct (below).
But let’s look at unemployment as a share of the workforce. This time last year, where did the economic forecasters think it would go? The answer comes in the blue and yellow lines. The thick red line shows what the UK economy actually did. So – and this really is extraordinary – UK unemployment is already lower than the IMF thought it would be in 2018.
And why did they get it wrong? Not because they’re idiots or charlatans – they were just using old models and formulas.
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