If employers can think differently about how they provide work opportunities. the proportion of people of all ages who want a job and can t find one the rate of unemployment is very low, which is good, but can also present an economic problem. we still have millions of working age people who are not actively looking for a job, either because they re in education, they are unable to, or then maybe they re too unwell to look for a job. and that means employers have to compete for the ones that are looking for a job, pushing wages up, which in turn pushes inflation up, which then makes people ask for higher wages. and it s that wage spiral that the bank of england is so afraid of. for now, demand for workers is still outstripping supply. but there are signs that private sector employers are scaling back on hiring, as the outlook for the economy darkens. that s not an option for public services, who can t treat or teach fewer people, and whose wages have lagged behind the private secto
That s a fall of 56,000 over the last three months, and the demand for workers also fell slightly, with the number of vacancies down 76,000, but there are still 1.1 million unfilled jobs. the government wants to see more over 50s back at work. we have quite a long way to go to get back to where we were prepandemic. in fact, we would need to see those figures go down by about another 500,000 to get back to that point. so there is a huge amount of work to be done, but there are some encouraging signs at least, and they are early signs but encouraging signs over the last quarter, that those figures are beginning to come down. we still have millions of working age people who are not actively looking for a job, either because they are in education, unable to or maybe they are too unwell to look for a job, and that means that employers have to compete for the ones that are looking for a job, pushing wages up, which in turn pushes inflation up, which then makes people ask for higher wages, an
To be done, but there are some encouraging signs at least, and they are early signs but encouraging signs over the last quarter, that those figures are beginning to come down. we still have millions of working age people who are not actively looking for a job, either because they are in education, unable to or maybe they are too unwell to look for a job, and that means that employers have to compete for the ones that are looking for a job, pushing wages up, which in turn pushes inflation up, which then makes people ask for hiring wages, and it is that wage spiral that the bank of england is so afraid of. demand for workers is still outstripping supply, but falling vacancies show some employers remain cautious. 2022 was a difficult year, having started out very optimistically, so i would say employers are looking to stabilise the situation, try and get through the first half of 2023, hopefully inflation stabilises and vacancies will start to grow again as the year progresses. private se
so one of the things that people wonder, i suppose we end up in this situation with 3, 3 1/2% inflation rather than 2% which is what most central banks target. is it worth triggering a recession to get inflation down? how should we think about that tradeoff between unemployment and inflation? so i think the most important thing to recognize about that tradeoff is that it is a tradeoff between short run reductions in unemployment, and permanent changes in inflation. and, so, the benefit that we could get from pushing unemployment low is on almost all economic theories likely not to be a permanent one. but if we push inflation up and those expectations become en trenched, we re going to live with that inflation for a long
But if we push inflation up and those expectations become entrenched, we re going to live with that inflation for a long time. one of the reasons that the labor market is so tight, it is difficult to find workers in america, about 3 million people have stopped looking for work. and we re not quite sure why. and i wondered if you had any theories? i heard i think it was a time spot where they interviewed a lot of the people and it sounds like they were americans were moving toward a somewhat european attitude towards jobs, saying, these jobs were not very good. we worked very hard. and we ve moved back to our home with lower costs and got a couple of gig jobs in the gig economy and making 60% or 70% of what we were making but that is fine. is it your sense that there is