This week’s economic news has prompted hope among the Tories that the tide is finally turning in their favour. Employment is at a record high, inflation is down to 2.2 per cent, its lowest level since November 2009, and borrowing has fallen to its lowest level for four years. The positive trend will continue next week when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announces that the economy finally returned to growth in the third quarter (the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, for instance, has predicted growth of 0.8 per cent). Team Osborne hope that all of this will allow them to tell a plausible story of recovery.
However, it’s worth pointing out several inconvenient truths. First, the next set of growth figures will be artificially inflated by the bounce back from the extra bank holiday in the previous quarter (which reduced growth by an estimated 0.5 per cent) and by the inclusion of the Olympic ticket sales (which are expected to add around 0.2 per cent to GDP). So, if the ONS announces that the economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the third quarter, the underlying rate of growth will be just 0.1 per cent.
Worse, many expect the economy to contract in the fourth quarter (what our economics editor David Blanchflower has termed a “triple-dip recession”). Bank of England MPC member Martin Weale has warned: “The Jubilee depressed output in the second quarter so you get an automatic bounce back. But if we talk about underlying growth then I think the economy is flat. I certainly would not say there is no risk of [a triple-dip recession] happening.” Martin Beck, UK economist at Capital Economics, told the Today programme last week: “we expect the economy to start contracting again in the fourth quarter.”
On employment, the picture is similarly mixed. As I noted when the most recent figures were published on Wednesday, 59 per cent of the 212,000 jobs created in the last quarter are part-time and nearly half (101,000) are in London, suggesting that the labour market benefited from a temporary Olympics effect. Adequately paid, full-time employment is still remarkably hard to come by. Of the new jobs created over the last three months, one in three offer fewer than 15 hours week a work, while 54 per cent offer fewer than 30 hours. A near-record 1.4 million people are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. It’s also worth noting that most forecasters expect unemployment to rise significantly next year as further spending cuts, a lack of growth and rising productivity restrict job creation. The CBI, for instance, predicts that unemployment will increase by nearly 200,000 to 2.7m.
Finally, the deficit. While September’s figures were better-than-expected, borrowing so far this year remains £2.7bn (4.2 per cent) higher than in the same period last year and George Osborne is still expected to miss his annual target by £5-10bn. The Chancellor aims to borrow no more than £121bn this year, but in the first six months of 2012 he’s borrowed £65.1bn. As a result, when he delivers his autumn statement on 5 December, Osborne will likely be forced to postpone his goal of eliminating the structural deficit (originally scheduled for 2015) for a third year – to 2018. Having once hoped to offer significant cuts in taxation at the next election, the Tories will only be able to promise yet more austerity.
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