Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The British jobs miracle, in six graphs.

No one quite expected it, and even now ministers struggle to explain it. But the British jobs miracle has become the single biggest fact of economic life – proving that sometimes, things go badly right as well as badly wrong. Cameron has now overseen more job creation than his last six predecessors did at this stage (above). The excellent Michael Saunders from CitiGroup has produced an excellent report about it (pdf) and some of his charts are below.

Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 14.09.54

1Jobs growth is beating every single forecast (see chart of total jobs, above), even the optimistic forecasts that George Osborne was publishing when he was talking about abolishing the deficit in five years. He has since given himself ten years, but look at these jobs. Even the March 2014 forecast from the OBR looks laughably out of date.

Screen Shot 2014-06-13 at 14.11.11

2. And look at the flip side, unemployment.

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