Using data from government and media outlets, it can be estimated that about 40% of the adult population are now dependent on state funding to survive. For example, over 6  million workers are furloughed, there have been 1.8 million additional claims for universal credit – on top of the pre-crisis figure of well over a … Continue reading 40% now dependent on state funding – another step to a basic income? →

If medical evidence shows young people to be least affected by coronavirus, they are most likely to suffer economically.  The Institute of Fiscal Studies reports that employees aged under 25 are about two and a half times as likely to work in a sector that is now closing down. https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14791 Some economists  are predicting that … Continue reading Lock down will hit young people the hardest. →

Management and personnel journals are well versed in the advantages of working from home.   Working from home is supposed to improve employee retention   - by eliminating  increasingly long commutes,  it allows employers to recruit applicants from more geographically remote areas, improves motivation and efficiency and of course, produces financial benefits, savings on office space and … Continue reading ‘There’s no place like home’? – working practices after the crisis. →

".............. governments need to deploy massive fiscal stimulus, including through “helicopter drops” of direct cash disbursements to households. Given the size of the economic shock, fiscal deficits in advanced economies will need to increase from 2-3% of GDP to about 10% or more. Only central governments have balance sheets large and strong enough to prevent … Continue reading ‘Helicopter drops’ and the magic money tree… →

Just think. Barely a month ago government was still sticking to its ‘fiscal rules’ about how much it could borrow and for what. Loosening the ‘austerity’ straitjacket slightly but still reminding us that there was no ‘magic money tree’,  everything needed to be costed and paid for. On the eve of Chancellor’s 'coronavirus' budget, announcing … Continue reading There is a magic money tree (or a forest) after all! →

  While all major western capitalist economies have experienced a growth in the proportion of low paid, low skilled work especially within the service sector, these trends have been particularly pronounced in the UK. Accelerated by a decade of austerity they have been the deliberate result of an economic model promoted by Boris Johnson's predecessors. … Continue reading Tories dismantling their own ‘reserve army’ →

Labour has always been the party of manufacturing.  By the second half of the 20th century, factory workers had taken over from those working in ‘primary’ production  as  Labour’s main union base.  A need to rebuild manufacture is now, if speeches by  leadership candidates and trade union general secretaries  are anything to go by, seen … Continue reading Manufacturing jobs are not coming back. →