Slower growth, plentiful jobs
* One of the surprises of recent years has been the way in which, despite disappointing growth, unemployment has continued to fall. Britain’s growth rate has halved since the peak in 2014 yet the unemployment rate has maintained its downward trajectory and is now at the lowest level in over 45 years.
* This phenomenon is not unique to the UK. Germany’s growth rate fell away rapidly last year, bringing the economy close to recession, yet unemployment kept falling. Unemployment rates in the US and Japan are also at historic lows, despite slower growth.
* Through most of the twentieth century unemployment was seen by policymakers as the central challenge facing economic and social policy. With unemployment in many Western countries at multi-decade lows policymakers these days are more preoccupied with low growth. Unemployment, long the scourge of Western economies, seems to have become yesterday’s problem.
* Far from machines replacing people in the work place, it seems employers have favoured increasing employment over investing in machinery or technology. The appetite of major economies for labour has risen, driving unemployment rates down and bringing more older people, foreign-born workers and women into the labour market.
* In the UK the participation rate of older workers, aged 55–64, has risen from 60% in 2008 to 68% today. Women’s participation rate, at 73%, has never been higher and is well above the EU average. Foreign-born workers account for more than 40% of the increase in employment since 2008, with EU workers making up the lion’s share of the growth. The Resolution Foundation notes that labour supply has also been increased as employees work longer hours to insulate themselves against what many see as a more volatile economic outlook.
* Is the party coming to an end for the jobs market? There are some signs that the slowdown in the wider economy is starting to catch up with the labour market. Job vacancies have fallen 7% from their peak in December 2018. The Bank of England’s measure of corporate hiring intentions, based on reports from their regional agents around the country, has softened. In a sign that the labour market may be cooling people are changing jobs less frequently. And in April the NLW (National Living Wage) will rise by 6.2%, more than four times the rate of inflation, taking hourly earnings for over-25s to £8.72. So far significant rises in the NLW have had little discernible impact on jobs, but it is not without risks.
* Yet in the absence of a sharp deceleration in GDP growth it is hard to see unemployment rising much this year. Government spending is on the rise and the public sector is hiring at the fastest rate in more than ten years. A post-election bounce in business sentiment and easy monetary policy are supportive of the jobs market. And, on the supply side, labour is getting scarcer. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU is likely to mark the end of a sustained period of rapid growth in the UK’s EU-born workforce.
* Growth may have slowed but in the jobs market the balance of power seems to be edging away from capital to labour. Wage growth has picked up in tandem with a fall in inflation. Wages’ share of GDP is rising, while the profit share is falling. In the last ten years there’s been much talk of how well profits have done compared to wages. Now wages growth is putting pressure on margins.
PS: Following last week’s briefing about coronavirus, here is an update on recent developments. The daily increase in new coronavirus infections and deaths slowed in the first half of the week, with the vast majority of cases in China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak. On Thursday health officials in Hubei confirmed 14,840 new cases (nine times the number on Wednesday), but this was mainly due to a change in diagnosis criteria, resulting in the reclassification of older cases that had not been previously reported as coronavirus. On Friday Hubei reported 4,823 new cases, confirming that the Thursday surge was due to the reclassification of older cases, but also indicating that the new reporting methodology complicates comparisons with the previous case trend. Our colleague Dr Jane Halpin has reviewed World Health Organization data on a range of viral diseases and notes that coronavirus cases currently stand at over 69,000 and deaths at over 1,600 while the seasonal flu can affect 3–5m people globally each year, resulting in 300,000–600,000 deaths. Last week Chinese factories were meant to reopen, but many workers were restricted from travelling, resulting in continued factory closures and others operating below capacity. Deloitte China cut its 2020 China GDP growth forecast from 5.8% to 5.3%–5.5%. Owing to the economic disruption caused by coronavirus, the International Energy Agency expects a quarterly contraction in global oil demand for the first time since the global financial crisis.
OUR REVIEW OF LAST WEEK’S NEWS
The UK FTSE 100 equity index ended the week up 0.1% at 7,447.
Economics and business
* Sajid Javid resigned as UK chancellor after rejecting the prime minister’s order to fire his team of advisors amid a wider cabinet reshuffle
* Sterling rallied after the appointment of Rishi Sunak as his successor, with markets expecting easier fiscal policy in the upcoming budget
* Bernie Sanders topped the New Hampshire Democratic primary, following a narrow victory for Peter Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses the week before
* Betting markets rate Michael Bloomberg as the most likely Democratic nominee despite his late entry
* Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the party of German chancellor Angela Merkel, whom she said she will not succeed
* The UK economy expanded by 1.4% last year, marginally faster than the 1.3% pace the year before. Growth slowed in the fourth quarter
* The euro area economy expanded by a quarterly rate of just 0.1% in the last three months of the year, the slowest pace since 2013
* Euro area industrial production deteriorated at a faster pace than expected in December. The sector posted a full-year contraction of 4.1%, its worst performance since 2012
* The euro fell to its weakest level since 2017 amid the string of poor economic data
* UK prime minister Boris Johnson gave the go-ahead to the high-speed rail link HS2, admitting it had been a “controversial and difficult decision” amid criticism of the project’s management so far and of spiraling costs
* The new chief executive of BP, Bernard Looney, pledged to cut the oil company’s emissions to net zero by 2050
* Tesla announced plans to raise $2.3bn in new shares following a steep rise in the electric car company’s share price
* German challenger bank N26 announced its withdrawal from the UK, citing complications related to Brexit
* Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank of England warned that the UK may need to diverge from EU financial regulation, saying “The UK cannot outsource regulation and supervision of the world’s leading complex financial system to another jurisdiction”
* Ireland’s general election produced a hung parliament as nationalist party Sinn Féin made large gains
* US household debt rose strongly in the fourth quarter to a new record of $14tn
* Although the US labour market has posted strong job growth and low unemployment recently, the number of job vacancies fell at its fastest pace since the financial crisis in December, suggesting the jobs market may have peaked
* The yield on Greek ten-year government bonds fell below 1% for the first time ever, despite having a junk rating from credit rating agencies. The yield reached 40% in 2010
And finally... a zoo in San Antonio, Texas has come up with a novel business idea for Valentine’s Day. In exchange for $25 they offered people the chance to name a rat after one of their ex-partners. They then fed the unfortunate rats to a group of hungry Komodo dragons live on Facebook – a dragon-ian punishment