The Budget: What you need to know

1. Growth. The OBR’s forecasts are essentially unchanged from the Autumn Statement, but nevertheless represent a much bleaker outlook than we were given a year ago: 

2. Debt. Despite Osborne’s talk of ‘paying down the debt’, he’s actually adding to it — by 59 per cent over this parliament. He is, though, on course to meet his second fiscal rule to see the debt to GDP ratio falling by 2015-16:

3. Deficit. Ignoring the effects of transfering the Royal Mail pension deficit, there’s hardly any change to the borrowing forecasts since November. Progress on deficit reduction will be much slower than announced in Osborne’s first two Budgets:

4. Unemployment. The OBR expects unemployment to peak at 2.8 million later this year, before falling steadily:

5. The squeeze goes on. Despite inflation falling rapidly this year, the OBR doesn’t expect real earnings to rise until 2013: