Bloomberg News ran an article listing the woes of the British economy on Dec. 21, in which it included worsening recession, 40-year record inflation (actually so high, EIR has found, that Britons now regularly speak of “our cost of living crisis"), and large sections of the workforce going on overlapping strikes throughout December. Most disturbing to Bloomberg seemed to be that $26 billion equivalent was pulled out of British (mainly non-financial) stocks in 2022 and more is expected in 2023, making Paris now “Europe’s biggest stock market.”
What the news service did not note, is the severe shrinkage of the U.K. workforce, analyzed in a CNBC piece Dec. 28. The number of people reported as in the labor force has dropped by just about 2%, or 630,000, since the start of 2020. Whereas the United States labor force suffered similar shrinkage of nearly 3 million in 2020-21, it has recovered that portion; the U.K. workforce has recovered none of it. Moreover, according to the U.K. Office of National Statistics, most of the labor force shrinkage occurred after COVID lockdowns (and the government’s furlough subsidies to companies) ended—in the second half of 2021 and in 2022. That office reported that between June and August of 2022, some 2.5 million Britons 16-64 years of age cited “long-term sickness as the main reason for economic inactivity,” in a total labor force of about 34 million—"a labor market exodus of unique proportions among advanced economies,” says CNBC. “U.K. data show no sign that these lost workers are returning … even as inflation and energy costs exert huge pressure on household finances.”
