...The UK recovery to date has been patchy and in recent quarters it has begun to lag behind both previous UK recoveries and the pace of recovery elsewhere in the world. This sluggish performance is due to fragile world economic growth, constrained consumers and a retracting government. We now expect GVA growth of 1.3% in 2011 and 1.8% in 2012, but the risks remain heavily skewed on the downside. The labour market has been surprisingly resilient over recent months, given the weak growth performance but unemployment has once again started to creep up. With employment growth likely to remain sluggish over the remainder this of this year and perhaps into early 2012, further increases in unemployment are certain. We expect unemployment to peak at 1.7 million in 2012, though there are risks that this could be higher. Public services have already shed over 100,000 jobs despite it being the early stages of the austerity programme. It could be that the government has underestimated the scale of job...
