Economic growth Mountain climbing Making progress on the UK’s growth policy challenge 19 January 2026 by Elliott Christensen and Nye Cominetti and Sophie Hale and Greg Thwaites …stronger job creation. At the same time, Brexit-related trade frictions, weak business investment and persistent policy uncertainty continue to weigh on the economy’s capacity to deliver sustained income growth. The… READ MORE
Living standards· Economy and public finances New Year Outlook 2026 Early and encouraging signs of a mild zombie apocalypse 5 January 2026 by Ruth Curtice and Greg Thwaites …recent times, incomes have grown as slowly as this only in years of big external or self-inflicted shocks: the pandemic in 2020, the energy crisis in 2022-23 and the Brexit… READ MORE
Productivity & industrial strategy· Fiscal policy· Economic growth Trend setters What is the OBR’s forecast for trend productivity growth, and why it matters so much for the Budget 14 October 2025 by Greg Thwaites and Elliott Christensen …final year productivity growth estimate by 0.1 percentage points, due to continued weak productivity growth and the economic effects of Brexit.[5] Figure 3: Outside the pandemic, the OBR last made… READ MORE
The Government doubles down on the UK’s superpower in services 14 October 2024 by Greg Thwaites …where traditional manufacturing exports face challenges: global trade in services is expected to rise faster than trade in goods over the next decade; and Brexit has hit UK goods exports… READ MORE
Labour market Understanding the labour market: pandemic not pandemonium The labour market is normalising, not overheating 28 June 2021 by Torsten Bell and Kathleen Henehan and Krishan Shah and Hannah Slaughter and Greg Thwaites …to some, we have “eye popping growth” to look forward to as “Brexit Britain Booms”. For the labour market, this turn to optimism has seen a swift shift away from… READ MORE
