Bad news from the Budget isn’t stopping just because it’s Christmas. Figures this morning from the Office for National Statistics show the number of job vacancies has fallen to a three-year low of 796,000 for the month of November. Not many incentives to hire on offer…
That is the 29th consecutive fall over two and a half years in job vacancy numbers, with 9 out of 18 industry sectors posting a decline. Hiring dropped to 818,000 in the three months to November, a decline of 3.7% from the previous quarter. Wholesale and retail have been hit in particular. Yesterday’s S&P Global flash UK purchasing managers’ employment index showed private sector employment in December falling at the fastest pace since January 2021 or 2009 if you exclude the pandemic. Meanwhile the estimated number of people on payrolls slumped by 35,000 to 30.4 million from October to November. How’s not taxing “working people” going, Rachel?
Speaking to Adam Boulton on Times Radio about kicking the Golders Green suspect, Heidi Alexander said:
“I thought that if I was in the shoes of that police officer, then if I’m honest, given the situation, and the fact that he had a backpack on his back, and they were worried about whether that might go off, I could, if I was a police officer, frankly, I could see myself having taken similar action.”