Why aren’t more people unemployed?

An unfamiliar noise floats over the town; an insistent, one-note metallic drone. Tracked to its source, it turns out to come from a sawmill in a hidden wooded valley a quarter of a mile from my house. Abandoned for the past year, the mill has suddenly come back to life. It is emitting great plumes of steam as well as a multi-decibel industrial racket. And men are working there — I can see only two or three, but still they constitute another little piece of the great employment puzzle.

An uptick in demand for sawn timber matches reports of increased levels of activity in the construction and housebuilding sector. Sure enough, quarter of a mile in another direction, a development of stone-built terraced houses that was an abandoned wasteland for three years until last autumn, amid rumours of several changes of ownership, has also come back to life. The houses are up to first-floor level; several trades are busy on site.