A British paper called something like Business Daily, printed on pink paper to emulate the prestige of the FT published in its edition of Feb20/21 as its front page splash the story that public sector jobs now total almost 1/4 of all jobs in the UK.
They claim this is hidden in the figures of the Labour Force Survey of the Office of National Statistics, published today.
Another angle on this is that since the Labour Government came to power in 1997 45% of all new jobs have been in the state sector.
I remembered these stats from the supermarket but foolishly forgot to double check the exact title of the paper which tends to concentrate on commentary rather than news.
Nevertheless it is unlikely that the interpretation is wholly wrong.
I thought I would share it as a sign of Brown's strong anti-cyclical neo-Keynsianism. The different from the Bush administration is that his is social democratic Keynesianism, rather than populist tax-cutting right wing.
Chris Burford
