Unemployment rate falls to 4.3% as wages stagnate

[jds 1981]

Amazing isn't it? Soon there'll be no unemployed working able people left in the UK.

What's really going on here? Tory's doing a first class job managing the economy? Cause the economy or productivity levels don't appear to be improving, in fact the reverse.

Or an ever increasing ageing population with fewer employable people messing up the stats?




source: Unemployment rate falls to 4.3% as wages stagnate - BBC News

Productivity increases through training of people or through the purchase of more efficient / productive machinery and tools.
If people are still cheap, it is cheaper to hire bodies than to invest in machinery.
At some point wage inflation hits and companies have to invest money in their processes rather than hiring bodies and the productivity goes up.

Think of it this way, 100 people manually assembling a car is less productive than a mechanised line using only 5, but if those 100 people only earn £1 / day each that might be a reasonable compromise.

[BlasterBates]

We're still importing a shed load of people which will cap wage growth.

How do you explain real wages rising in Germany ?

Average wages in Germany are 20% higher than in the UK.

When you understand that you'll understand that closing the borders won't help.

[ladymuck]

I think the nail on the head is the rise in part time employment, people on zero hours contracts, and a rise in the self-employed. The latter two are not necessarily working, but they're also not counted as unemployed.

Also, I seem to recall, that there's some creative accounting around how you count the unemployed with those on certain benefits, under or over a certain age also being excluded (or I may have dreamt that).

[The_Equalizer]

How do you explain real wages rising in Germany ?

Average wages in Germany are 20% higher than in the UK.

When you understand that you'll understand that closing the borders won't help.

Single currency kept artificially low by the southern member states' poor performance. That, and the UK likes taking tea breaks instead of doing things.

I don't remember saying anything about closing the borders. Still it doesn't make any odds to you as you don't live here.

[jds 1981]

How do you explain real wages rising in Germany ?

Average wages in Germany are 20% higher than in the UK.

When you understand that you'll understand that closing the borders won't help.

I was trying to find a real wage growth comparison between UK and Germany but couldn't find one, do you have any links?

[SueEllen]

I think the nail on the head is the rise in part time employment, people on zero hours contracts, and a rise in the self-employed. The latter two are not necessarily working, but they're also not counted as unemployed.

Also, I seem to recall, that there's some creative accounting around how you count the unemployed with those on certain benefits, under or over a certain age also being excluded (or I may have dreamt that).

No you haven't dreamed it.

The way of counting who is unemployed has changed at least once a decade since the early 80s. I remember looking at some stats for a course I was doing a few years ago.

[Gibbon]

Productivity increases through training of people or through the purchase of more efficient / productive machinery and tools.
If people are still cheap, it is cheaper to hire bodies than to invest in machinery.
At some point wage inflation hits and companies have to invest money in their processes rather than hiring bodies and the productivity goes up.

Think of it this way, 100 people manually assembling a car is less productive than a mechanised line using only 5, but if those 100 people only earn £1 / day each that might be a reasonable compromise.

Rather than the inverse in France, hiring someone is worse than capital expenditure as you can't pay them off or sell them, therefore they invest in machines and not people so increasing productivity. This however causes higher unemployment.

[BlasterBates]

Single currency kept artificially low by the southern member states' poor performance. That, and the UK likes taking tea breaks instead of doing things.

I don't remember saying anything about closing the borders. Still it doesn't make any odds to you as you don't live here.

So you agree that there are other economic factors. Interestingly you point to a low currency, but the pound has dropped very significantly since last year in fact 20%, so by that logic wages should be shooting up, however they're not quite the opposite. The second thing is 2 million immigrants came to Germany in 2015, and the Brits moan about 300,000 "flooding" their job market, this year a paltry 220,000 came, yet in spite of this flood of "cheap Labour" Germany's wages still rise.

So if it isn't the currency and isn't about flooding a job market with cheap immigrants, what is it?

Well it's to do with productivity. It doesn't matter what your currency does, it doesn't matter how many immigrants flood in, if companies are profitable they will pay more. Anyone who's studied economics knows about the PIMs study demonstrating the link between wages and profitability.

Unfortunately the "Sun" logic rules in the UK, and by the way, here is their latest attempt at communicating to their European partners:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/442456...blasenen-dandy

If you're familiar with German then you may notice how bad it is full of really bad grammatical and spelling mistakes which basically sums up why wages are falling in the UK.

Whilst illiterate newspaper editors are governing the UK, things aint going to improve.

[excon]

Maybe because it doesn't fit your narrative when the BBC reports something that you consider positive?

Pound hits year high on inflation data - BBC News

Neo-Nazi soldier arrests: Two men released by police - BBC News
Neo-Nazi charges: UK soldiers appear in court - BBC News
Bad BBC for daring to report this when they are only supposed to report news that makes them seem biased

There is an entire website dedicated to the subject, you should take a look:

https://biasedbbc.org/

From the horses mouth:

https://biasedbbc.org/quotes-of-shame/


The BBC is “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large”.

All this, he said, “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC”.

–Andrew Marr

“It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat.

“If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.”

– Jeff Randall, former BBC business editor

By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent. *Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on *running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.

– Peter Sissons, Former BBC News and Current Affairs presenter


And so on...

[WTFH]

Unemployment rate falls to 4.3% as wages stagnate

There is an entire website dedicated to the subject, you should take a look:

https://biasedbbc.org/


And so on...

Are you denying the links I posted above, like the other two have done?

The other posters claimed that the BBC refused to report on two particular news stories, I provided links to the stories which factually prove they have, thus proving that the poster's claims were false.

Are you saying those links do not exist?