Reeves’s Job Taxes Trigger Biggest Hiring Slump in the G7
Rachel Reeves’s job tax raid and inflation-busting minimum wage increases have triggered the biggest hiring slump in the G7 – and this is before Labour’s jobs-destroying Employment Rights Act comes into force, ‘banter ban’ and all. The Telegraph has more.
Figures from recruitment platform Indeed show that the number of new job adverts posted in the UK has fallen by 12.3% since the Chancellor’s first Budget in late October last year.
This is by far the most severe drop among G7 countries, though comparable data were not available for Japan.
Jack Kennedy, a senior economist at Indeed, said the Chancellor’s policies helped explain why the UK’s job market had weakened so much more than those of other wealthy countries.
Mr Kennedy said: “There are really three policy drivers to that. The employer National Insurance contribution increase was obviously pretty consequential. We’ve had fairly large minimum wage increases and the Employment Rights Act. It’s a triple whammy that’s been contributing to that caution.”
The number of job postings no more than a week old when recorded has fallen by 12.3% in the UK compared with October 2024, when the Labour Government delivered its first Budget. The measure serves as a proxy for new hiring and indicates a marked decline.
Vacancies have fallen by 5.4% in Germany and 4.4& in France over the same period. In the US, new job adverts fell 3.2% over the same period; in Italy, 1.9%; and in Canada, 9.9%. Across the euro area as a whole, new hiring fell 4.5%.
The stark numbers underline just how uniquely challenging the situation is for jobseekers in the UK. Recruiters have described the prolonged downturn in vacancies as a “hiring recession”.
Bosses warned ahead of Ms Reeves’s first Budget that plans to raise employers’ National Insurance contributions would amount to a “jobs tax” that would put people off hiring. Employers have been hit with a £26 billion tax rise, an inflation-busting minimum wage increase and a further 4% jump to £12.71 in April.
The changes have made hiring significantly more expensive, especially for industries that rely on low-wage and part-time workers, such as hospitality and retail. The UK now has one of the highest minimum wages in the world.
Mr Kennedy said: “In the UK, we’ve now got low-wage jobs trending weaker than high-wage jobs, which is really quite contrasting to what we see in other European economies. In France, Germany and Italy, low-wage job postings are still holding up better.
“That certainly speaks to the pressures that sectors that employ fairly large numbers of low-wage workers have been facing. For me, that’s quite a telling data point.”
Indeed also tracks new job adverts in several other rich countries outside of the G7. None has experienced a hiring downturn on the same scale as in the UK.
The Netherlands and Ireland registered much smaller declines of 1.2% and 2.5% respectively. In Spain, hiring was up 18% over the same period, while in Australia it was up 1.5%.
Indeed’s figures contradict the Chancellor’s recent claim in Parliament that she was boosting hiring and helping young people enter the workforce. Ms Reeves also argued there was no link between her tax rises on employers and the recent increase in joblessness.
Unemployment has now risen to an almost five-year high of 5.1%, while redundancies are at their highest since Covid.
Meanwhile, the British economy shrank by 0.1% in October and has effectively flatlined since May.
Worth reading in full.
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And what else did they expect to happen? “Modern Monetary Theory”, that you can just borrow and borrow till the end of time is simply a rebranding of Labour’s “Magic Money Tree Theory”. And we all know how that ends.
MMT. Magic Money Tree.
Looks like all Liebour’s hard work is starting to bear fruit. The profit figures for the major retailers such as M & S, Tesco, etc should be an absolute riot of a read when they arrive at the end of the month. I’ll bet Kneel can’t wait because he must definitely be on course for a super Brucie Bonus.
The destruction of the country is moving “at pace” as the r.soles in the Civil Service like to put it. How much longer the people will put up with this God knows but if there is a kick off it will probably be brutal. Something has to give at some point.
I think she is a wooden puppet. Her lower jaw gives it away. It flaps up and down in a peculiar fashion.
She does look more like Petrushka every day.
The Government’s fiscal and economic policies are so monumentally destructive that they have to be deliberate. No other conclusion is possible. It is malicious damage, not incompetence or stupidity. Nothing can ever defeat an enemy within.
To be honest, I think you can never rule out how monumentally stupid these people are. I hark back to something the great Dr Richard North once said. Before he became closely involved with politicians he used to respect them and thought well of them. when he moved inside the bubble he could not believe how stupid they actually were and that if breathing was related to IQ most of them would be gasping for breath or dead.
I certainly take your point except for one thing. Politicians want to be loved, they need to be popular. This lot act as if that doesn’t matter because something bigger is in play and ultimately they won’t be affected by the consequences of their actions. Maybe they expect to be rewarded. They might be disappointed to find it buries them too.
Indeed’s figures contradict the Chancellor’s recent claim in Parliament that she was boosting hiring and helping young people enter the workforce. Ms Reeves also argued there was no link between her tax rises on employers and the recent increase in joblessness.
Hands up anyone who thinks Lying Rachel was telling the truth. Hmm…thought not.
Plus, those who would take these jobs now find it’s better to stay on benefits anyway. Quadruple whammy
Union bosses say their members are turning towards Reform UK because of the cost of living, and Labour should concentrate on economic growth.
Since Labour are concentrating on destroying economic growth, growing it whilst destroying it will be a neat trick.
Fat chance, Union brothers.
And really Union bosses – you think it’s just cost of living? Nothing to do with deluge of immigrants?
Would this be the same unions that are cheering on the moronic job destroying employment legislation that Ranting Raynor came up with?
For the life of me, I can’t understand why all of these lunatics are so desperate to get closer to the EU, when they are on the path they are currently on. The left want nationalisation, but the EU opposes it, except for existing state ownership and critical situations. We pay more than the minimum wage in all EU countries, our railways are bad but the most expensive, because mostly our train drivers are paid twice as much as any in the EU. We pay more for energy and have stricter targets than nearly all of the EU, but the idiots want to sign us up to the EU for energy, which will mean even stricter targets, even though the EU don’t seem to abide by them. Let’s swap students and pay the EU a fortune for the privilege. Let’s sell them armaments, yep, we have to pay Brussels a few billion to do that as well. We are rapidly becoming the sick man of Europe again, miraculous when you consider how bad the EU economies are and the solution for these nutters, more taxes, less jobs outside of the public sector, more EU, even though our treacherous leaders have… Read more »
We are in competition with Germany for how to screw things up. They are losing jobs and companies every month, and their economy has been in recession for ages with no improvement in sight. Their cities are facing bankruptcy as they have to fund the immigrant scum out of ever declining business and sales tax income. In some ways, although hard to believe, their government politicians are even more retarded than ours.
It’s all deliberate. The Establishment wants us back in the EU; it is a political project and they want in.
If the only way they can achieve it is to utterly destroy the British economy and beggar British taxpayers, they’ll do it.