By Ben | January 13, 2010
As a follow-up to my recent post about Prof Charles Handy here, I was interested to come across this article in the Times last week that highlights the many entirely new jobs that will be created this century. As my wife reminded me recently, most of the jobs that will employ our children’s generation probably [...]
By Ben | November 5, 2009
A very good analysis of the shortcomings of public sector involvement in promoting entrepreneurship and venture capital in this week’s Schumpeter column in the Economist. Interestingly (but perhaps not that surprising) it is Israel which emerges as the most successful promoter of such initiatives:
“The Israeli government’s venture-capital fund, which was founded in 1992 with $100m [...]
By Ben | September 16, 2009
Time for our quarterly look at unemployment with the news that in the three months to July the total number of jobless rose by a massive (and scary) 210,000, the equivalent of the entire population of an outer London borough.
Over to you Lord Sugar: ”Hounslow…you’re fired.”
Well they may not be coming until 2010, but the announcement by Tesco that it is to create 800 new jobs in Glasgow as part of its growing finance business is good news. Why Glasgow? Doubtless a £5m grant from the Scottish Executive helped to sweeten the deal, but it’s likely that Tesco was looking [...]
Posted in Economy, Posts | Also tagged Glasgow, RBS, Tesco |
A worrying piece in Personnel Today quotes both John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI with the same observation: that the much touted creative alternatives to redundancy (e.g. 4 day weeks and job sharing) may only serve to delay redundancies rather than prevent them altogether. [...]
A further illustration of the paucity of new jobs about comes in the announcement by Diageo that it was to ‘create’ 400 new jobs at the same time as it made 900 redundancies, which is beginning to unravel. As this report in the Daily Record shows, many of those new jobs are in fact [...]
As we’ve made it a habit here to report on many of the job losses over the last six months it would seem churlish not to raise a small cheer for the news that Nissan is to create 350 new jobs at its Sunderland plant. But two thoughts spring quickly to mind: first, this is [...]
Posted in Economy | Also tagged jobs, Nissan, Sunderland |
On Radio 4 this morning there was more talk about green shoots. But as is always the case with recessions, unemployment tends to lag behind any upturn (and I am not convinced that it’s over yet). As if to illustrate the point, we learn today that in the three months to May 281,000 people have lost [...]
Another sector, another business shutdown. Today’s news that the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society is to close its branch network with the loss of 1,660 jobs is terrible news for the economy. More high street premises will now stand empty and more people will join the list of unemployed. Following so close on the heels of [...]
More bad news for the UK’s manfacturing sector with the collapse today of van maker LDV with the loss of 4,000 jobs. As the FT reports, this follows LDV’s attempt to secure government aid of £20-£30m, which was ultimately unsuccessful. While Lord Mandelson’s refusal to offer a bail-out might seem hard hearted, it must be [...]
