Economic inequality is now firmly on the public agenda as candidates and voters alike look for someone to blame for stagnant wages, entrenched poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor.
Bernie Sanders blames Wall Street. Donald Trump points his finger at companies moving overseas. Hillary Clinton identifies middle-class families who are working harder but staying in place as the root cause.
The longer life expectancy of people in industrialised countries means governments are raising the ages at which citizens can apply for state pensions.
In the UK, state pension age for both men and women is set to rise to 66 by October 2020, and 68 by 2046. Now the government has launched a review to look at whether it should rise even higher in the future.
Imagine a country in which there is no statutory right to paid holiday, no legal limit on the number of hours employees can be required to work, no right to a daily rest period, no laws to prevent employers discriminating against workers who are disabled or who have particular religious beliefs, and no right for employees to take time off work to look after a sick child.
This was the UK before the New Labour government was elected in 1997. Since then a substantial number of employment rights have been introduced – most of which have their roots in EU legislation.
The optics of the US jobs report was better than the details, which is the exact opposite of the January employment report. The US dollar strengthened on the news.
When you send off a CV to a prospective employer, you will hope to get a fair hearing. You will hope that your skills, experience and qualifications decide the response, rather than the school you went to, your post code, or even your name. Instinctively, though, we know that this isn’t always the case.
Prime Minister David Cameron already has zeroed in on the issue of how applications from people with non-Anglo-Saxon or Celtic names are treated:
The decline in the labor force participation rate helps explain the substantial decline in the US unemployment rate over the past couple of years. That decline has helped bring the Federal Reserve to the point that a December rate hike is extremely likely barring a significant disappointment at the end of the week with the November jobs report.
When members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) approved a new contract with Fiat Chrysler on October 22, they ended a contentious round of negotiations that exposed rank-and-file discontent over a two-tier wage system that one worker described as “at odds with union principles.”
In a rare move just a few weeks earlier, Fiat Chrysler’s 36,000 workers had rejected an agreement proposed by their leaders, protesting that it failed to close a pay gap that kept newer employees lagging behind the earnings of their more senior counterparts.
The US jobs data was considerably stronger than expected and leave no doubt about the December meeting being live despite the year-end considerations that some had seen tying the Fed’s hands. The dollar broke through key chart points near JPY122 and $1.08 for the euro.
Nonfarm payrolls leapt 271k, nearly 100k more than the consensus anticipated. The August and September job growth revised higher by a minor 12k. September actually revised down by 5k, with August revised up 17k.
We have become used to living with the productivity puzzle but the labour market figures released today now add a labour market conundrum. The total number of people in work fell by nearly 70,000 comparing the three months to May 2015 with the previous three months – the first significant dip in the figures since 2010. But why? We would normally associate sharp falls like this with the onset of recession, and there is absolutely no sign of that.
“Time is running out to help workers move up the jobs ladder” – at least according to the OECD’s latest employment outlook.
The somewhat gloomy report points to unemployment rates exceeding 11% in most European countries. Around 42 million people are without work across the OECD. That is down from 45 million in 2014 but still 10 million more than just before the global financial crisis.
