UK to be one of worst performing economies this year, predicts IMF | Hacker News Reader

UK to be one of worst performing economies this year, predicts IMF

bbc.com

70 pointsrntn28 comments

I've been based in London since 2018. One thing that I have noticed in the past year (apart from the overall abysmal state of the job market) is that IT salaries have actually went way down. When I moved, I started at a higher salary than what's shown as ranges for a lot of jobs now 5 years later. All London based roles and I'm talking about positions across the board from junior to senior and beyond. That in combination with COVID, inflation, IR35 etc. has wrecked everything. Now, I'm between roles and I'm actually thinking that it might be time to leave.

Not my experience. Lots of demand from recruiters, Salaries decent (e.g. im expecting a offer of around 180k base imminently).

What's the job market like? You mean fewer jobs?

Where would you go next?

> What’s the job market like? You mean fewer jobs?

Based on my anecdotal data it’s not good. And yes - fewer actual jobs. Last year I did some interviewing throughout the year and it seemed things were picking up to before-COVID level. After I left my previous place last September I got a nice (although short) outside IR35 contract. That finished just before New Year’s. Since then it’s been absolutely dead. Most recruiters are just CV harvesting. A lot of the job ads on LinkedIn, JobServe and others have been put on repeat for months. It seems a lot of companies are waiting for recession and have paused hiring. OR I just have had a bad luck, which is possible of course. It should be noted the financial year has just ended, so that period being Q4 for a lot of companies with uncertain budgets played a part for sure, but time will tell.

> Where would you go next?

There are a couple of options. Have a good friend in Switzerland that can help me out if I go there. Can go back to Bulgaria which has a very healthy IT market or might make the jump across the pond. I haven’t really decided, but I’m thinking on the matter.

Be warned that every year-over-year number still needs to consider the effects from the pandemic. The UK will seem to look bad in 2023 because they recovered well in 2022 so the year-over-year baseline is artificially high. Countries like Canada and Japan that still had some pandemic restrictions dragging down 2022 are the ones who will look good for 2023 over an artificially low baseline. Both of those are an illusion of time-shifting, displacing economic activity and demand from one year into another.

For real numbers, compare 2023 to 2019 and see what it looks like for a four-year time span. That's your real numbers here.

Even discounting annual variance, the UK economy has been performing very poorly since, at least, 2010.

> The UK economy is in the doldrums. The IMF has forecast it will be the worst-performing large advanced economy this year. But the problems stretch back much further.

> Average annual growth rates have more than halved since the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The UK economy is no bigger now than it was on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019 and the Bank of England does not expect to recover that ground until 2026 at the earliest.

https://www.ft.com/content/dd195cda-ca12-48a6-9e8b-65a36e4e7...

That’s true of every big European country except Germany. The UK, Italy, France, and Spain (four of the five largest countries in Europe) have basically the same GDP now as in 2008.

Germany is screwed too, they lost access to cheap Russian gas, the auto market is changing, car exports account for 40% of their GDP. Companies like Daimler, the Vag group or BMW should really begin to target the defence sector.

The U.K. had a lost decade from the Great Recession to present [0][1]. There was a slight uptick in the 2017-19 period and in 2022 but a lot of that was lost due to covid and political instability respectively.

[0] - https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/02/10/understanding-...

[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/7968048a-3f7f-4cb0-8fa1-e10aff14b...

Ah yes, nothing to do with self-inflicted sanctions...

It doesn't appear to be? Or at-least plenty of the EU managed to do just as poorly without leaving?

No? British GDP is 0.8% lower than pre-pandemic, Eurozone 2.4% higher.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02...

"plenty of the EU" != Eurozone

Well, the whole EU did better than just the Eurozone, 2.8% GDP growth compared to pre-pandemic:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/16249744/2-0...

I'm trying to avoid accusing you of intentional misinterpreting my statements but you continue to try and use the whole EU or other groupings of counties to compare against the UK instead of against other individual nations that remained inside the EU which I very clearly stated.

It’s just an illusion. Keep moving.

Your contention is that any and all poor performance is due to the pandemic, not in any way related to Brexit?

I'm not sure 2022 looks quite as good as you're suggesting, but it's clear the pandemic had a profound impact, certainly.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/19/britain-eco...

> Your contention is that any and all poor performance is due to the pandemic, not in any way related to Brexit?

Your interpretation of the parent post is mistaken. They are saying that if you wish to try to isolate the effects of Brexit from the effects of the pandemic (and the recovery) in your analysis you should compare 4 years' data.

I'm not sure the initial comment lends itself to that reading, but it isn't clear it lends itself to my initial response either, so I'll switch over to your more charitable reading. Thanks!

Big surprise, a state-funded (kinda) organisation doesn't know how to sell. Economics is all about sales, guys...

But the UK is getting a triple whammy from the financial fallout of Covid-19, Ukraine invasion & fossil fuel prices, and Brexit.

The IMF are notoriously bearish on the UK economy. As the article notes the IMF have already upgraded their outlook for the UK economy once.

ofc they are bearish IMF is pro europe so that they can coerce states into doing what they want and uk liberated himself from it.

uk was never a real member of eu, it entered the union with a lot of less strings attached, the only country to get such treatement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_opt-outs_from_E...

The UK was not unique in having “opt-outs” from the EU-other countries have them too:

Denmark has a formal opt-out from the Euro. Several other states (e.g. Sweden) have de facto opt-outs from the Euro - unlike Denmark, EU treaties say they have to join, but their governments have decided to ignore that legal obligation - without consequence, since the treaties failed to provide any enforcement mechanism for it

Denmark and Ireland both have opt-outs from security and justice policies. Ireland’s opt-out permits it to opt-in on a case-by-case basis, Denmark’s doesn’t. Until it was abolished in a 2022 referendum, Denmark also had an opt-out from the EU’s military policy

Poland has a partial opt-out from the EU’s human rights charter

Ireland has an opt-out from Schengen (abolition of border controls). Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus are parties to Schengen, but haven’t yet implemented it

The UK's opt outs were to rules brought in during its membership, not prior to it's accession to the (then) EEC.

Really?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-outs_in_the_European_Uni...

Your linked page says that Britain had four opt-outs before they left the EU, more than any other country. At some point it even has five opt-outs.

Not sure if they had opt-outs immediately when they joined the union (as the grandparent claims). But they were surely the member for which most exceptions were made.

Some non-Brits were actually happy when Britain left the EU, since it removed a member that frequently blocked or slowed down integration. Not sure whether this is true though.

Is there someone with a graph of the estimates of UK economic performance against what actually eventuated in the past few years? A bit of a controversial topic but estimates after covid have been terrible. Great time to be in a hedge fund.

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