Does the latest data tell us the UK labour market has now fully recovered?
Not really.
Experimental data from HMRC does suggests the numbers on company payrolls is now back *above* pre-crisis levels... ons.gov.uk/employmentandl…
...and the official unemployment rate has fallen again to 4.5%, not far from pre-crisis rates...
...Yet, the total number of hours being worked was still 3% lower in the three months to August...
...and the employment rate was still below the pre-crisis peak...
...meanwhile, the number of vacancies was well *above* the pre-crisis numbers...
...So it would seem that the labour market simultaneously has too much slack and also too little.
How to explain this?
Furlough is probably part of it. This data pre-dates the end of the scheme.
Yet the reality is that it's still hard to be certain what's going on...
...@tonywilsonIES of the @EmploymtStudies argues here that the problem of supply not matching demand is that almost a million people have left the labour market (relative to where we would have been on pre-crisis trends)...
The Conservatives have released a host of adverts about the state pension on Facebook which we at #BBCVerify think are misleading.
Here's why...🧵 1/9
“Remember when Labour increased the state pension by only 75p?” asks the Tory video adverts, contrasting this with a claimed £3,700 increase since the Tories came into government in 2010...2/9
BBC Verify analysis of the ad library data of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, suggests they have run 975 versions of this single campaign message - just changing the name of the town or city being targeted - since 21 June...3/9
The Green party (England and Wales) leader Adrian Ramsay told @BBCr4today:
“We would still be near the bottom off the European league in terms of tax base overall [if we implemented our proposed tax rises]”
Let's look at this...#BBCVerify
OECD data shows tax as a share of GDP in 2021 was 33.5% - certainly below most big EU countries and the average of the EU14 (countries who were members of the EU prior to 2004)...
But, as we know, tax is rising as a share of UK GDP.
And by 2027/28 the @TheIFS estimate it would be 37.7% of GDP - putting us closer to the middle of the European pack...
There was an odd claim this morning by Jeremy Hunt in his media round:
“Living standards have fallen by more [than the UK] in Germany, Austria, or Sweden”...
Brief 🧵...
...He didn't specify over what time period he was talking about, or what measure of living standards he was using, or why he'd selected those countries to compare...
...At Verify, we've been pressing the Treasury for some guidance on all these points.
They've told us the Chancellor was referring to this measure from the OECD called "Real gross disposable income per capita of households"...data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?fs[0]=Topi…
...Second thing to note is HMT using a different figure for defence spending - it's "Nato-qualifying defence spending" which includes items such as the Single Intelligence Account & military pensions etc