Rosy

It seems as though everything is going to hell in a handbasket at the moment. We're headed toward a big old pile of inflation, industrial unrest, war, political corruption, fuel crises, brexit, climate change, pandemic, travel chaos, mass murder, increased crime and more. Of course it's a Human trait to look at the past through rose coloured specs, still, it does feel to me like we're headed toward a cliff of some kind? Probably (according to predictions I've heard) kicking off this Autumn/Winter as inflation bites and the economic rebound from the end of the pandemic slows and eventually stalls.

Speaking, as I do fairly often, with city types who make their livings from trying to predict the future, especially as it relates to economic wellbeing, the general prognosis is gloomy. The wage inflation we've seen over the last year or so will undoubtedly hit a brick wall by the Autumn and perhaps even go backwards in many sectors, unemployment seems likely to increase or at least the number of high paid jobs available seems set to fall dramatically, whereas the number of poorly paid, unskilled jobs available will likely increase. This kind of contraction will in turn affect growth and employment opportunities in a kind of deadly embrace (i.e. race to the bottom) and it seems difficult to see what could nudge us out of that orbit when many of the factors impacting these trends are outside of our control, i.e. are regional or global in nature. Token individual Government interventions seem likely to be ineffective and a period of recession, retrenchment and increased national insularity (protectionism) seems likely. The OECD reckon that only one economy will perform worse than the UK next year and that's Russia!

Many key sectors will suffer as the economy shrinks, house prices will be forced down, or at the very least flatten off and those people with large mortgages and long commutes will find themselves under severe financial pressure. Basic food prices will increase (we're seeing this already) and availability of certain key things will become sketchy as pressure mounts on supply chains and transport costs. Industrial action as a reaction to this seems inevitable and that adds it's own particular flavour of chaos into the mix, it's understandable, but certainly doesn't help. People will have to get used to a period of reduced growth and reduced profits, downsizing, cutting-back and austerity far further up the food chain that previously experienced in recent history (or perhaps even living memory) . 

From this vantage point, the future as they say, ain't looking so rosy!