Squeezed households will need higher wages
James Plunkett
This article originally appeared on the Prospect blog.
While Libya takes the spotlight, the British economy wheezes in the dark. Monday’s survey from Markit showed household finances worsening at their fastest rate since early 2009. Yesterday, a new poll from the Resolution Foundation confirmed that picture. Half of all low-to-middle income households say they’re running out of cash each month; only one in four are making regular savings. Many households now face the unenviable choice between cutting their spending still further and increasing their borrowing. Needless to say, at the national level, neither option translates into a promising path to recovery.
Household finances are a ‘millstone’ around the neck of recovery
James Plunkett
This blog first appeared on Left Foot Forward
A new poll out today from the Resolution Foundation confirms the extent to which poor household finances are now exerting a downward pull on the UK economy. The poll, carried out for the Foundation by ipsos MORI, finds that almost half of all people on low-to-middle incomes now say have no cash left over at the end of each month. More than one in four say they don’t make any regular savings. The findings reveal in stark terms that millions of ordinary households – not the poorest, and the vast majority in work – are now living on the edge of their means.
These tax cut whispers are about to get louder
Gavin Kelly and James Plunkett
This post originally appeared on Gavin’s New Statesman blog
With summer over, the skies are darkening in more ways than one. Economic forecasts, previously strong for this autumn, have long been heading south. Last week sharpened the sense of impending crisis. The FTSE has been shaken more violently than at any time since the paroxysms of early 2009. On Wednesday, unemployment stats took their biggest quarter-on-quarter leap since March 2009. The US and German economies are flat-lining.
Whatever your favoured explanation for our worsening economic plight, one thing is increasingly clear: the UK economy is propped up on pillows, in desperate need of a shot in the arm. It may not be fashionable to say it, but that shot needs to involve a pickup in consumption and domestic consumer confidence.
Making a Rented House a Home
Vidhya Alakeson
Published today, the Resolution Foundation’s Making a Rented House a Home outlines the shocking fact that the average low to middle income household buying a home today would have taken 31 years to save for a deposit , compared to 8 years in 1983. Last week a report by the estate agents, Savills, revealed that for the first time in Britain’s post-war history, more people are becoming tenants than home owners. We are witnessing a major transformation in our housing market that will see Britain become more like Germany and Switzerland where more than half the population rent rather than own a home.
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Archive for August 2011