Is our economy prepared for another economic shock?

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Today’s labour market statistics give us some insight. They show the state of the UK’s world of work, from just before the US war on Iran began impacting the global economy.

The headline offers a rare sliver of good news. Unemployment, which has been growing faster than forecasters' predictions, surprisingly fell a little to 4.9 per cent - a sign that workers entered this crisis in a stronger position than feared. But beneath that number, the picture is more troubling. Well before Trump’s first strikes on Iran, our labour market was already “cooling” – a word economists use to describe slower hiring, fewer job vacancies, lower worker turnover and lower wage growth. A cooling jobs market – especially ahead of an economic shock – is bad news for living........

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