Daily Brief – UK Employment

UK Employment

At 75.1%, employment for people aged 16-64 looks sort of OK depending on what that really means, but it does not alter the fact that there are currently 1.55 million people who are unemployed, or 4.4% of the potential workforce. Another much more significant number, is that there are currently 9.27 million people between the ages of 16 and 64 who are termed as being economically inactive as at January 2025 or an inactivity rate of 21.5%. That includes those not working and not seeking work as well as those who are unemployed and not actively seeking jobs. The number of vacancies is pretty steady at 781,000. Cracking the nut of getting more people into work will do more for Chancellor Reeves’ growth commitment than anything else hence her first tentative baby steps towards incentivising people to…..work. After that she could usefully take a look at encouraging businesses further to employ people – so far she has rather done the opposite.

GBP/USD 1.3245.

China and Brazil

To read and listen to the news at present, the global trade war is all about USA vs China, right? In fact four graphs of commodities show the massive trade between China and Brazil: China imports 2X as much Soyabeans from Brazil than it does from the USA at USD 40 Billion, 3X Beef at USD 6 billion, 2X Corn at USD 4 billion and 2X Poultry at USD 1.7 billion. So even before tariffs, Brazilian farmers were doing very well from China but now that already huge trade is set to balloon.

EUR/USD 1.1341.

VAACs

Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres are what stands between normality and disruption caused by erupting volcanoes of the sort in Iceland in 2010 which brought jet travel to a virtual halt. 8 days of non flying, 300 airports shut, 10 million passengers disrupted, 100,000 flights cancelled and an estimated GBP1.1 billion cost to the airline industry. What’s changed in almost exactly 15 years? Not much. Some vague statement about disruption being less if it happened again in 2025 due to planes being able to fly through the ash filled skies safely but then qualified by …unless it was a bigger eruption.

EUR/JPY 162.11.

Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan (yes that one)

“It is what it is” set the standard as the go to trite cop out phrase in the past few years and is often accompanied by a rueful smile, deep sigh and a shrug of the shoulders – it is overall intensely irritating. However this week Meghan Markle has re-entered the psycho babble stakes with her new podcast, the first Episode of which we have not had the opportunity to tune in to but have gleaned the following gems: “How do you bottle your essence?” That certainly left us pondering. Then there’s the suggestion to “Take stock in your actual stock”. When it came to joining in with Meghan, her first guest, dating app Bumble CEO Wolfe Herd was up to the task explaining that her aim was to “foundationally re-architect the way that people date.” With that sort of insight, aficionados will be agog for Episode 2.

GBP/EUR 1.1673.

Starsky and Hutch

David Soul, the singing half of derring-do duo Starsky and Hutch, the improbable TV detectives decided to cash in on the success of the show by releasing this song this day in 1977, which stormed up the charts and took the Number One slot on Billboard. Trite it may be, cliched it certainly is but it caught the market mood in 1977 and maybe POTUS should adopt it in 2025:

Don’t give up on us, baby
Don’t make the wrong seem right
The future isn’t just one night
It’s written in the moonlight
Painted on the stars
We can’t change ours

Don’t give up on us, baby, we’re still worth one more try
I know we put a last one by
Just for a rainy evening when maybe stars are few
Don’t give up on us, I know we can still come through

I really lost my head last night
You’ve got a right to stop believin’
There’s still a little love left even so

Don’t give up on us, baby
Lord knows we’ve come this far
Can’t we stay the way we are?
The angel and the dreamer
Who sometimes plays a fool
Don’t give up on us, I know
We can still come through

It’s written in the moonlight
Painted on the stars
We can’t change ours

Don’t give up on us, baby, we’re still worth one more try

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

Click Here to Subscribe to the SGM-FX Newsletter