I was questioning the made up facts from one of your right wing friends on here. But sadly he seems to have done a runner. Just like you will do soon.

There is little good news in the economy so far. Of course growth is preferable to contraction but they're still relatively low figures and we have a huge amount of ground to make up.
The unemployment figures have fallen. Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest people have been forced to take very low hour/zero hour contract jobs when not suitable or forced off JSA altogether by jobcentre sanctions. The Unemployment figures don't take into account the underemployed. Also the employment figures include all unpaid family workers (up 9%) and all those on apprenticeships, work experience and government training & employment programmes. Not to mention the employment figures don't take into account population increases, whilst the unemployment rate does but doesn't factor in foreign, short stay workers. And the claimant count doesn't include those now on Universal Credit.
Median real wages have fallen since 2009 and continue to fall. Now at a level similar to a decade ago.
Redundancies have stayed roughly similar, but are still only at the level they were 2 years ago.
The number of underemployed workers has risen by 300,000 since 2010 and continues to rise with a large number simply classed as "unknown".
The long term unemployment rate has increased and continues to.
GDP per capita has fallen since 2010 and shows no sign of increasing.

This is, of course, all a national picture and we know some areas are particularly suffering. Which hasn't been helped by the abolition of the regional development agencies and a huge cut to government investment under the Coalition, down to negative net figures.

As for your (and George's) assertion that the post election economic dip was due to the Eurozone? That's just guff.
The UK dip started end of Q3/start of Q4 2010. As the graph you've used shows the Eurozone didn't go into recession until 2012. Plus during that period exports increased, they didn't take a hit. Both business and consumer confidence were both positive and increasing in the period prior to the election. As was consumer spending, retail sales, housing production, industrial production, capacity utilisation and manufacturing production. Whilst the number of unemployed, the youth unemployment rate, government bond yields, inflation and bankruptcies were falling.
It was the UK government not the Eurozone that so affected the UK economy.

...

UK GDP per capita

UK
France
Italy

Why should they?

There is an element of truth in the mortgage low interest, not totally true as those who bought into fixed rates will confirm but fortunately for those like me our fixed rate ended at the time that base rates were falling and I rang the Nationwide up for advice - and this is why I favour mutual societies rather than outright mortgage selling shops - they advised that their 2.5% base rate would last "for at least 12 months", three years later we're still benefiting.

It still does not disguise the fact that household bills in total have never been higher and I include that mad period in the 80s when interest rates hit 17% and this has to worry the two parties in government, everyone has to start feeling better about the economy early in 2014 to drive up to the election, I expect some sweetening and incredible PR in the early months of next year.

As for the ONS stats, yes they are adjusted, usually after two quarters and the initial figures are always labelled "to be taken with a pinch of salt", it is however unusual for the figures to be adjusted fifteen months later and even more so five years later and you have to ask what or who was the driving force behind that seemingly random choice of revisionary calculus ?

You really know absolutely nothing about it, do you?

Which of Labour's policies caused the subprime market in the US to collapse triggering the whole thing?

While others conveniently ignore the reasons for the whole balls up in the first place...

Why shouldn't they?

That they do not disguises the depth of the issues, both individual, societal and economic.

Not every one has the time to spend their life on forums. Some of us have to work.



Well we disagree. Given the state of the world's economies what we are seeing in the UK is very good news. Nobody is doing cartwheels and I have stated there is much more still to do. But the evidence is clear Osbornes austerity plan is working and his critics have been proven to be wrong. You appear to be a sore loser!



Some of this maybe true but the overall number of new jobs has risen which should be welcomed given the very difficult hand this government were dealt. This increase in jobs is the complete opposite of what the left wing economist doom-mongers predicted.


Really?



So you think the many and serious problems left by Labour and the world economic meltdown could all be solved at a stroke eh?



Are you really saying the euozone crisis and recession had no serious impact on our economy?

Underemployed isn't unemployed.

I didn't say that it was.

But we use unemployment as one measure of the economic health of the nation. Underemployment is the same – and it closely linked to the question of unemployment.

And one present question is what the downward movement on unemployment means. Because if people have largely gone into jobs that only, for example, give them an hour a week of work, with concomitantly low pay, then that is merely a disguise for a continuation of something that is almost the same as unemployment and costs society and taxpayer in the same way, and celebrating it is mere spin.

If it isn't unemployment then why count it as it is, let it have it's own measure, give it's own identity, make it feel important.

Who counts on the underemployed stats? Is it new starters? Part time workers? Full time workers? Do they want the extra hours to buy heat, clothes, an iPad, a holiday, dental work (sorry, just forked out £49)?

On the flip side, are there overemployed (made up word) people? How many want less hours?

Then there's the firms themselves, if they don't have the orders surely it's better to employ on the basis of what they can fulfill? I was at a customer last Thursday, the line runs on average 3 days per week, but things are picking up and that will increase probably towards the middle of next year based on how the sector operates. Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port is another. You can bet the guys/girls at these places would class themselves as underemployed, but I will also bet they'd rather be that than unemployed.

Nobody minds the classic four day week on reduced pay to get the company out of the mire approach, indeed this is why a redundancy procedure recommends that ALL employees are consulted because often that is the preferred method rather than having job losses.

The problem of under-employment at the moment isn't so much that "Its a bit slack so we'll drop one shift", its the growing tendency to advertise new posts as limited hours, 20 being a favourite, zero being the devil incarnate and then using employees on those contracts as spare capacity - its nice and flexible for the employer and seems like a good idea at the time but in reality it is no way to continue running an economy if you hope to be a financially strong economy.

For one thing, no-one on 20 hours a week can support themselves let alone a family, on £126 gross (NMW) per week - anyone who is only guaranteed those hours will struggle to find accommodation and will definitely be claiming housing benefit and working tax credits, in other words the public purse is paying people to work, worse still those employees will barely be paying any tax and their tax take will definitely be far greater than their contribution.

Its fine doing this in such austere times as we just have to get through, but its no master plan for the future and some recording of such numbers should be made (if not already), the ideal plan when the good times roll again should be to have everyone out of the range of tax credits and not by simply reducing the limits for when they become payable.