How to unpick the apparent paradox of falling GDP and rising unemployment
GDP estimates are eagerly awaited in the City, and dominate the media headlines. Huge significance is attached to arithmetically trivial differences, whether between market expectations and the announced figure, or to subsequent revisions to the data. But GDP is not something which can be put in a set of scales, say, and measured accurately. The […]
How bad is this recession?
A number of commentators have pointed out that this is the slowest recovery from recession in more than a hundred year. Taking output measures this is correct. But taking employment as the main measure of recession it is not. Both the 1980s and the 1990s saw much sharper job losses, while the 1970s recession saw […]
