Economy

Employment has almost entirely recovered to its pre-recession peak, according to today’s new figures. Total employment for May to July stood at 29.56 million — up 236,000 on the previous three months and just 12,000 shy of the 29.57 million peak of April 2008. This recovery is thanks to the expansion of the private sector, which has added over a million new jobs in the last two years, and now employs 381,000 more people than it did before the crash. Public sector employment, meanwhile, has been cut by 628,000 since the coalition took over, and is now at its lowest level since 2001. The scale of private jobs growth —

The Corby by-election campaign is warming up, with the Tories selecting Christine Emmett as their candidate. Emmett is a local woman who lives in neighbouring Rutland. She runs her own management consultancy, and claims ‘extensive experience’ working with the NHS and in other areas of the public sector, notably in the fashionable area of ‘health and wellbeing’. The emphasis that the party is placing on Emmett’s work with public services, particularly the NHS, suggests that its strategy will concentrate on public service reform rather than economic policy. Speaking of which, Nick Clegg, in an interview with the Times (£), has reiterated that the autumn will be dominated by a ‘rat-a-tat

There is great excitement in some circles at a paper from the International Monetary Fund which has emerged in the past 24 hours. This piece of research warns that cutting government spending too quickly can weaken economies permanently and lead to even deeper recessions. It says: The analysis in this paper shows that withdrawing fiscal stimuli too quickly in economies where output is already contracting can prolong their recessions without generating the expected fiscal saving. This is particularly true if the consolidation is centred around cuts to public expenditure – likely reflecting the fact that reductions in public spending have powerful effects on the consumption of financially-constrained agents in the economy

It’s official: Quantitative Easing has marked the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich of any government policy in recent documented history. The Bank of England released an analysis today, which was rejected as being an underestimate by the former government pensions adviser Ros Altman. But it was shocking enough, and the strongest point was made by the brilliant Ed Conway, economics editor of Sky News, who put it into a graph who would benefit from a QE-inspired boom in asset prices described by the Bank of England  today. “10th” means the richest tenth of the population, and so on. This is our new graph system: hover your mouse over each

We won’t know the economic impact of the Olympics until the GDP figures for the third quarter of this year are released, but today both Boris Johnson and Downing Street tried to strike an upbeat note. In his Telegraph column, the Mayor of London writes: ‘As we marvel at what they have done, and the general success of the Games so far, I want to issue a general word of caution to the Olympo-sceptics, who will be itching to return to their gripes. They will say there will be no increase in sporting participation, and no economic benefits, and that we will not succeed in regenerating east London. Well, just

The Chinese have excelled at London 2012, much to the annoyance of their Western rivals. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Ross Clark argues that the claims against swimmer Ye Shiwen reflect irrational suspicion of her country. Here is an edited version of Ross’s article (you can read the full version here): The story of London 2012 has been that of a country which was once an underachiever in the Olympics but which, through sheer hard work on the part of its athletes, has hauled itself to the top of the medals tables, producing in the process one of the most dramatic world records in Olympic history. I refer,

Mitt Romney has broken the habit of a lifetime and taken a risk. But it’s an intelligent risk. That at least is the view of some commentators on hearing confirmation that Romney has appointed Paul Ryan as his running mate. Niall Ferguson tweeted earlier: ‘Romney gets it right with Ryan. Now this election gets serious. It’s a straight fight between radical fiscal reform and Europeanization.’ David Frum makes a similar point (albeit with a clear note of scepticism) in a blog post for the Daily Beast: ‘This election—which Romney once intended to make a referendum on Obama’s record—will now become a referendum on Paul Ryan’s bold budget ideas.’ Frum provides

Sir Mervyn King’s sporting jokes are almost as bad as the Bank of England’s ability to publish accurate economic forecasts. As he unveiled the August Inflation Report this morning, the Governor said: ‘Unlike the Olympians who have thrilled us over the past fortnight, our economy has not yet reached full fitness, but it is slowly healing. Many of the conditions necessary for a recovery are in place, and the MPC will continue to do all it can to bring about that recovery. As I have said many times, the recovery and rebalancing of our economy will be a long, slow process. It is to our Olympic team that we should

‘Desperate Treasury to water down planning laws,’ blasts the Telegraph today, making it quite clear that it’ll oppose any effort by the government to return to planning reform. Those Tories who were uncomfortable with the original proposals are also making clear that they haven’t changed their position. The new national planning policy framework was announced this spring. Those who helped craft this compromise are privately stressing that it is simply too early to tell whether further changes are needed. But I still think there is a good chance that the Treasury will push for more planning reform this autumn. First, it is something that it genuinely believes would help the