What the papers say: The good and bad news about Britain’s booming jobs market

More Brits then ever are now in work, with the proportion of the working age population in jobs hitting 74.6 per cent at the end of 2016. Good news such as this about Britain’s job market has become ‘almost mundane’, says the Daily Telegraph. But even in this climate of healthy jobs figures, these latest numbers are worthy of attention. For the Telegraph, this is a ‘vivid reminder that Britain’s flexible labour market has weathered all the recent storms’. Talk about joblessness and unemployment used to dominate the headlines. But no more; ‘the conversation’ now is more ‘about the nature of those jobs’. Talk of the ‘gig economy’ in particular is much discussed. But is this focus causing politicians to lose sight of what really matters? It would be a mistake for the Government to make the job market less flexible, says the Telegraph. Instead, the paper says, ministers shouldn’t make it more expensive to hire freelancers but ‘narrow the gap by making it cheaper to employ staff on regular contracts’.