It would have been easy today to focus on the latest labour market statistics, showing rising unemployment, falling employment, fewer vacancies, another increase in economic inactivity and wage growth still too strong for comfort for the Bank of England. They have been described variously as “ugly” and “the worst since the pandemic” and they are not what a government would want during an election campaign.
Sometimes, though, you see another figure that makes you sit up and take notice. A recent example was from Greg Thwaites, director of research at the Resolution Foundation, who, in a piece by Jill Treanor, my Sunday Times colleague, pointed out that 90 per cent of new jobs over the past 20 years had gone to foreign-born people.
It