George Osborne rather glossed over the single most solid piece of good news in the Budget today: the Jobs Miracle. His pensions announcement means that tomorrow’s papers are likely to skip over it too. But it’s worth looking at – the government seems genuinely baffled as to why so many people are finding work. As I wrote in my last Telegraph column, the Treasury does not seem to recognise a supply-side, cross-departmental success when it bites them on the nose.
I’m just back from the annual Spectator Budget presentation, sponsored by Aberdeen Asset Management. We spoke a lot about this – the below graph sums it up…
As my earlier blog on the “six scary graphs” shows, almost all of George Osborne’s initial forecasts have proven to be laughably optimistic. But not jobs. Employment is rising, having seemingly become detached from the sluggish growth. Employment data has a life of its own.
The brown line shows Osborne’s June 2010 forecast – and the other lines show subsequent OBR forecasts.
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