Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as rising fuel and clothing costs push up the consumer prices index

Consumer prices index rose to 0.7% in March as economy recovers from Covid-19 crisis

The under-35s account for almost 80% of jobs lost in the past year. Three of them tell their story

Tobacco, travel and hospitality stocks lead fallers on the FTSE 100 index, as European markets have worst day this year

Separate figures show 4.7m jobs were furloughed at the end of February

Global economies forecast to pour stimulus money into fossil fuels as part of Covid recovery

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Official study finds home workers are less likely to take time off sick – but also earn above average

A new reality check is coming unless the west replicates its ‘whatever-it-takes approach’ to help poorer countries copeDenial. Panic. False dawn. Relief mingled with a decent dollop of euphoria. Britain’s response to Covid-19 has moved through distinct phases, and there are at least two more to come. Despite the success of the vaccine programme, a look around the world – to India, to Chile, to Brazil, to France and Germany – can lead to only one conclusion: this is not over yet.The early stages of the crisis are now easy to document. The denial phase lasted from the first cases of Covid-19 being reported in China towards the end of 2019 until the middle of March 2020. Initially, perhaps, some scepticism was warranted because there had been talk of global pandemics in the past that had not lived up to their horror-show billing.Related: As the grip of Covid eases, the UK looks set for a classic short-lived boom | Larry ElliottRelated: The latest figures are a wake-up call: the global Covid-19 crisis isn't close to over | Adam ToozeRelated: The world needs a patent waiver on Covid vaccines. Why is the UK blocking it? | Gabriel Scally Continue reading...

Our Houdini PM looks poised to win a byelection in a Labour stronghold, even as his signature policy creates crisis after crisisThe recrudescence of corruption and sleaze in a Conservative government ought, traditionally, to be a sign of electoral problems ahead. This was the case in the dying days of the 13 years of Tory rule from 1951 to 1964, and towards the tail end of the Thatcher-Major governments of 1979-97 – 18 years!And here we are, with a Conservative government that has been in office – with temporary help from the Liberal Democrats – for almost 11 years since 2010, steeped in accusations of sleaze and corrupt contracts; yet there is a widespread assumption that they will win the byelection in Hartlepool – once a Labour stronghold. Moreover, there is even speculation that if they do well in the local elections, prime minister Boris Johnson could spring a snap election on the back of such results and his supposed success with the vaccination programme, to say nothing of a “consumer boom” as the economy is released from the clampdown induced by the onset of the Plague.Why show so much respect for the minority of Labour voters who voted Leave at the expense of demeaning the majority who voted to remain? Continue reading...

British Gas engineers with years of service have been dismissed in an aggressive restructuring. These tactics are shamefulAt the beginning of last week, British Gas began retrieving the vans and tools used by hundreds of its gas engineers before one of the largest mass dismissals in recent British history. Days later, between 300 to 400 staff lost their jobs for refusing to sign up to new contract terms imposed by its FTSE 100 parent company.For some engineers, the British Gas kit used to repair and install the boilers and heating systems of millions of customers across the country had been part of their lives for decades. It was the same equipment used to restore warmth to homes during the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, when engineers clad in PPE stood in the frontline of their employer’s pandemic response.British Gas had to act to preserve its financial future, but it did not have to treat its workforce unfairly in doing so Continue reading...

Shares rise by more than 30 points as China reports record economic growth

Sales surge but footfall is still down markedly from pre-Covid pandemic levelShoppers are expected to flood to high streets and shopping centres in England and Wales this weekend after a bumper week, particularly for clothing and homewares sales, as people make the most of the reopening of non-essential stores.Visitors to high streets, retail parks and shopping malls rose by 90% from Monday to Thursday compared with the same days in the previous week, thanks to the reopening of non-essential stores as well as hospitality venues, according to the latest data from analysts at Springboard. However, numbers were still just over a quarter below those seen over the same week in 2019, before the pandemic hit. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

A quarter of companies caught in the recent lockdown have little or no confidence of recoveryWhisper it softly, but things are starting to look up for the UK economy. Evidence is beginning to accumulate that the easing of lockdown restrictions is allowing activity to return to something like normal.Naturally enough, there are plenty of caveats. A new and more virulent strain of the virus could sweep across the country leading to the shutters going down again on businesses that have only just opened. Continue reading...

From trade wars and deglobalisation to ageing populations and populist politics, there’s no shortage of inflationary threats on the horizonThere is a growing debate about whether the inflation that will arise over the next few months will be temporary, reflecting the sharp bounce-back from the Covid-19 recession, or persistent, reflecting demand-pull and cost-push factors.Several arguments point to a persistent secular increase in inflation, which has remained below most central banks’ annual 2% target for more than a decade. The first holds that the US has enacted excessive fiscal stimulus for an economy that already appears to be recovering faster than expected. The additional $1.9tn (£1.4tn) of spending approved in March came on top of a $3tn package last spring and a $900bn stimulus in December, and a $2tn infrastructure bill will soon follow. The US response to the crisis is thus an order of magnitude larger than its response to the 2008 global financial crisis.Related: Why is no one in Europe talking about dangers of rising inflation?Related: Why central banks are not hitting their 2% inflation target | Nouriel Roubini Continue reading...

Analysis: Outgoing Bank of England chief economist was seen as a maverick thinker alongside more cautious colleaguesHad Labour won the 2019 general election, there is a good chance that Andy Haldane would have been made governor of the Bank of England because John McDonnell, the then shadow chancellor, was a big fan.Any hopes that Threadneedle Street’s chief economist had of succeeding Mark Carney disappeared with Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority, and Haldane is now departing after 32 years to run the RSA – the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Continue reading...

Prominent economist to become chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts thinktankAndy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist and one of its most prominent public figures, has quit to become chief executive of the Royal Society for Arts thinktank.One of the UK’s leading economists, Haldane, 53, will step down from Threadneedle Street’s rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC) after the panel meets in June. He will take up his post at the RSA in September.Related: Andy Haldane: the funnyman central banker who's not great at maths Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as the UK economy returns to growth and one of its top central bankers steps down

Government figures showing a bounceback in February rightly come with a health warning

Some are optimistic for a return to normal, while others voice concerns over social contact and Brexit

Figures for February also show partial recovery in exports to EU after Brexit plunge

Investors turn to cryptocurrency after Erdoğan’s sacking of central bank governor caused further fall in liraThe neighbourhood teahouse is a focus of daily life across Turkey, an Ottoman tradition that has endured through the centuries. At the Red Lightning teahouse in Çorum, the enterprising owners have one foot in the past and one in the future: it’s the first in the country where customers can pay in bitcoin.“Everyone we know in Çorum is starting to invest in cryptocurrency. We think that in five years or so regular currency will be in decline, it will be replaced by digital ones. So we wanted to be in a good position now,” said co-owners Hüseyin Nalcı, 38, and Kerem Kutay Yıldırım, 28. Continue reading...

Households coming out of Covid lockdown have financial firepower – UK businesses hope they will use it

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as non-essential shops reopen in England, and pubs and restaurants welcome customers outside

Former prime minister says group should commit to global vaccine drive and slams UK’s foreign aid cut

Summer spending frenzy could be on cards as studies point to big economic bouncebackCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageOptimism among business leaders is at a record high based on hopes that Britons will commence a multibillion-pound summer spending frenzy after being freed from lockdown.On the day that non-essential shops and other businesses in England reopened for the first time since January, three separate studies suggest that the bounceback in the economy could be broader and faster than previously expected. Small, medium and larger FTSE companies all reported improved sentiment, with only exporters – affected by Brexit as well as coronavirus – suffering a downturn in fortunes. Continue reading...

Heavy borrowing by businesses could easily end in higher inflation and a ballooning trade deficitNever have the opening lines of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land seemed more apt. In 2020, April really was the cruellest month, as the first wave of Covid-19 deaths peaked and businesses were shuttered. Between March and April, UK output slumped by a fifth.This year, April will be different. The success of the vaccine programme means the government can go ahead with the next phase of the gradual unlocking of England’s economy. From Monday, it will be possible to go to the pub for a pint, provided you are prepared to brave the spring weather and drink outside.Related: Britain is ‘bouncing back’ into the same old economy Continue reading...

The GOP says the $2tn infrastructure plan is too big. Democrats say Trump cut taxes and ‘spent like a drunken sailor’The response was as uniform as it was predictable.Related: Republican ‘attacks’ on corporations over voting rights bills are a hypocritical shamRelated: On the House review: John Boehner’s lament for pre-Trump Republicans Continue reading...

If it can be achieved, the president’s goal will transform the economic balance of powerMore than a decade has passed without any progress in bringing the global tax system into the modern age. But less than three months after taking office, President Joe Biden has raised hopes of a breakthrough, with proposals that could kill tax havens dead and force multinationals to pay a fairer share of tax.The change in tone could not be more marked. With last week’s proposal for a global minimum corporate tax rate, Washington has turned away from years of economic orthodoxy that stretched back to the early 1980s and prioritised a neoliberal world vision – of free-market competition, government indifference and unblinking advocacy of globalisation. Continue reading...

Hopes of a rapid recovery overshadow the fact that the Tories have failed to reinvent the way the UK does businessIn some government circles, the excitement before Britain’s opening-up and return to something like normality is making ministers giddy.Grant Shapps says everyone may start booking a foreign holiday now that he is at work revamping last year’s colour-coded map of the world. With a traffic-light system of testing and quarantine rules in place, it is likely that nowhere will be out of bounds for Britons to visit. Inside No 10, last year’s recession is forgotten and the possibilities during the second half of the year are considered to be almost boundless.Policies masquerade as strategic when the only consistent thing about them is that they are tactical Continue reading...

Campaigners say US global blueprint would help raise billions from multinationals and tech giants

The Biden administration wants to end profit-shifting to tax havens by big tech firms and other multinationalsTax systems around the world have been increasingly left behind in recent years by the rise of globalisation and digital media companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. They are firms operating across international borders that can shift profits around to exploit the most attractive low-tax locations.Related: UK house prices hit record high a year after Covid-19 lockdowns began – business live Continue reading...

Ismail Ahmed, a refugee turned multimillionaire, says his country has had to battle ‘negative PR’Aid agencies are hindering development and undermining efforts to attract investment in Somaliland, according to a former World Bank and UN official turned entrepreneur.Ismail Ahmed, founder of the money-transfer company WorldRemit, claims Somaliland, his birthplace, has had to battle “negative PR” from aid agencies exaggerating their role to protect their interests. Somaliland declared itself a sovereign state independent of Somalia in 1991, but it is not recognised internationally.Related: When is a nation not a nation? Somaliland’s dream of independence Continue reading...

Duke tells IMF and World Bank event that investment in reforestation and cleaner oceans must be stepped upBanks can help to turn the tide in the battle against climate breakdown by investing more in nature, the Duke of Cambridge has said.Prince William told a joint International Monetary Fund and World Bank event on the climate emergency that there needed to be a marked stepping-up of investment in projects such as reforestation and cleaner oceans. Continue reading...

New American proposals offer the prospect of a global deal against corporate tax avoidance. Britain has a vital role to play in making it workThe terrible global cloud that is the Covid-19 pandemic offered the world the glimpse of a silver lining this week. New tax proposals by Joe Biden mean that the economic emergency caused by coronavirus could result in big multinational corporations having to pay the fair amounts of tax they have avoided for so long. A breakthrough this week at the 135-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development talks in Paris may produce an agreement. Giants like Facebook and Google would then have to pay up – and not before time. This is definitely a step in the right direction.Until Covid, the OECD corporate tax negotiations that began nearly a decade ago had been deadlocked, especially after the Trump administration refused to agree to anything that might raise taxes on US tech giants. Individual nations, notably in Europe, had started to impose or threaten stiffer local taxes, leading to retaliatory threats from Washington, but without inhibiting the big multinationals’ lucrative tax-avoidance strategies. Under Donald Trump, the US had even made clear that it reserved the right to allow American corporations to remain outside any new OECD-brokered regime. Mr Biden abandoned that demand in January. Continue reading...

Surge in housebuilding joined by strong growth in infrastructure and commercial projectsBritain’s construction sector has had its sharpest pick-up in activity since 2014 amid signs that the domestic economy is recovering more quickly than Brexit- and pandemic-affected trade flows, new figures have shown.The latest snapshot of the construction sector, which accounts for around 6% of total UK output, pointed to an across-the-board increase in March, with house-building, commercial projects and infrastructure work all displaying strong growth. Continue reading...

After Biden’s stimulus, the era of small states, low taxes and balanced budgets suddenly looks to be overA wealth tax to help pay for the cost of fighting the pandemic. An international agreement to prevent a race to the bottom on corporate tax. An insistence that recovery from the second severe crisis in just over a decade should be green and inclusive. A conviction that governments should spend whatever it takes to fend off the threat of mass unemployment, paying no heed to the size of budget deficit.There’s nothing startlingly new about any of these ideas, which have been knocking around for years, if not decades. What is different is that these are no longer just proposals put forward by progressive thinktanks or marginalised Keynesians in academia, but form part of an agenda being pursued by the International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury under Joe Biden’s presidency.Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news as Covid recovery hopes lift stocks

Meetings of finance ministers follow change in US stance, with consensus growing on tackling tax avoidanceFinance ministers from the G20 group of the world’s largest economies are exploring a global minimum tax on corporate profits, amid growing international consensus on tackling avoidance after the pandemic.The move to set a floor on tax rates paid by corporations comes after the US made the case for an international base rate this week, in a move by the Biden administration to end US resistance to international tax reforms.Related: Tax abuse and money laundering is trapping billions in poverty, says UN Related: UK overseas territories top list of world’s leading tax havens Continue reading...

Jamie Dimon says in shareholder letter economy on edge of ‘Goldilocks moment’ but upbeat news comes with caveatsThe US is about to enter a post-pandemic boom, according to JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, even though it has been “torn and crippled by politics, as well as racial and income inequality.”Related: Banks pledge to fight climate crisis – but their boards have deep links with fossil fuels Continue reading...

Fiscal monitor says rich should pay more tax on temporary basis to help support poor and vulnerable

Investor optimism rises after global body upgrades growth forecastsShares in the UK’s leading companies have closed at a post-pandemic high after hopes of economic recovery and calming words from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) boosted the optimism of investors.Related: Western economies recovering faster than expected from Covid, says IMF Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news as businesses in England prepare to reopen on 12 April

Growth forecast upgraded amid US and UK vaccine programmes and stimulus packagesStronger recoveries from the Covid-19 pandemic in the US, the UK and other rich western countries will result in faster than expected growth for the global economy this year, the International Monetary Fund has predicted.The Washington-based IMF’s half-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO) said successful vaccine programmes, businesses adapting to the challenges of lockdown and Joe Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.4tn) stimulus package had been key factors in the upgrade.Related: IMF calls for tax hikes on wealthy to reduce income gap Continue reading...

If the government intends to ‘build back better’ it needs to ensure better protection for workers

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsThe chancellor has borrowed an unprecedented amount of money. Who is lending it to him, and where did they get it?

Exiting the EU was not good for Britain. Greed did not bring us the vaccine. Johnson’s narratives will not stand the light of dayThere can be few people who have not at some stage in their lives felt that they had been “taken for a ride” or conned. Yet that, I think, will be the dawning realisation of a fair proportion of the 37% of the electorate who – without, in most cases, having the faintest idea of the implications – voted on 23 June 2016 to leave the European Union.Now, usually, if one is conned, it is over some relatively minor matter in the great scheme of things, and one learns one’s lesson. But when a significant part of a country is taken for a ride, it cannot be dismissed as a trivial matter from which it can easily recover.At a time when he pays lip service to carers, the man we have to call prime minister is a don’t-carer Continue reading...

To European eyes, the $2tn infrastructure plan may not be exceptional, but for America it seems revolutionaryFrom a European perspective, Joe Biden’s plans for a $2 trillion boost to spending on infrastructure is not a radical statement of intent. The money will be spread over eight years and raise the federal budget on capital projects by about 1 percentage point a year.And the US is starting from a very low base. Congress levies federal taxes that amounted to a little more than 16% as a proportion of national income (GDP) in 2019 and the total level of taxes, taking into account state and local charges, is 24.5% of GDP. By way of comparison, the UK’s share of tax levied as a percentage of GDP is around 37% and in France it is 46%. Continue reading...