guardian.co.uk Society:
Number of school-leavers not in education, work or training tops a million for the first time, figures showThe number of school-leavers not in education, work or training has topped a million, the highest total on record, government figures reveal today, prompting accusations that ministers are failing to help young people (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
Labour hope new cash will stop young jobless hitting 1m ahead of electionFear of youth unemployment rising above 1 million in the new year prompted Gordon Brown to use the last Queen's speech of the parliament to promise more money to ease the impact of the recession on the young.Some of the money will come from £2bn the Tr (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
Recession has magnified the misery of homelessness in the world's richest country. This crisis deserves Obama's attentionLast week's United Nations' findings on America's homeless crisis couldn't have been more timely or more depressing. Three years into the post-housing bubble era, special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik detailed (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
Brendan Barber says sustainable growth is needed to nurse public finances back to health"Slash and burn" spending cuts could sentence the UK to a decade as a Japanese-style "zombie economy," TUC general secretary Brendan Barber warned today.Speaking at the TUC's Beyond Crisis conference in London, about how to kick-start th (Read More)
The Guardian:
With inflation stronger than expected, the UK's recovery is still vulnerable to attackHang out the bunting. Prepare for the street parties. Wave the union flags. After six long quarters of recession, Mervyn King emerged from his bunker and declared that the war was over. VR Day – victory over recession – had arrived at last (Read More)
The Guardian:
• Firms reporting improved access to finance dropped to 3%• half of all employers are planning wage freezes The Bank of England's £200bn quantitative easing programme has failed to improve access to finance for businesses and half of UK employers are planning pay freezes in the coming months.The British Chambers of Commerce (Read More)
The Guardian:
The recession has worsened the plight of Asian workers in UAE and elsewhere. Their rights are only slowly being addressedThe exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf states has been worrying human rights groups for some time but now the recession is making their predicament even worse.Usually employed in a semi-formal ma (Read More)
The Guardian:
Pinning America's economic woes on China is too easy. The real villains are Wall Street bankers and their influenceBarack Obama is travelling to Asia this week and has promised to say something about the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar. It would be good if some enterprising journalist asked him why (Read More)
The Guardian:
None of this can mask the amount of debt accumulated in both the private and public sectorsYippee, the economy will soon be growing at 4%, according to the Bank of England's quarterly inflation report. And now the unemployment data is showing signs of improvement.Hold on, the governor of the Bank of England doesn't sound as (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Politics:
They are the backbone of the economy, but small businesses are still finding credit expensive and hard to come byThe recovery of the British economy is being hindered by the problems of the crucial small business sector in accessing credit, according to lobby groups.As official figures show lending to businesses is continui (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
The gap between low-paid low-skilled workers and high earners is already too greatDespite much talk of a return to growth, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics did not give the government or the economists the headlines they were hoping for. Rather than providing evidence of the long-anticipated green (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
If the UK fails to get public expenditure back to a sustainable level, and restore a low tax regime, it risks decades of stagnationWhere did this fiscal crisis start?Most certainly, it is not just a function of the credit crisis. Decades of political denial and then delusion were the mothers and fathers of this crisis.First (Read More)
The Guardian:
With US unemployment leaping above 10%, politicians and policy-makers need to urgently rethink plans for recoveryLike a cold front on the weather map, everyone saw it coming. But that didn't mean that we weren't caught without our coats on today when US unemployment broke into double digits: 10.2% of the American labour for (Read More)
The Guardian:
Infrastructure spending and tax cuts likely as official figures show October was the 22nd consecutive month of job cutsBarack Obama admitted today that the rise in US unemployment above 10% last month was "sobering" as fears grew that the worst jobless figures for 26 years would push the world's biggest economy back into re (Read More)
The Guardian:
Official figures show October was the 22nd consecutive month of job cutsThe US unemployment rate has broken through 10% for the first time since the early 1980s in a fresh sign of financial misery at grassroots level in the world's biggest economy.Monthly figures from the US department of labour revealed that employers cut (Read More)