{"id":1125,"date":"2021-07-21T11:32:31","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T10:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/?p=1125"},"modified":"2022-07-05T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T13:11:07","slug":"news-in-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2021\/07\/21\/news-in-review-2\/","title":{"rendered":"News in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWith every day that goes\nby our economy is slowly and cautiously picking itself up off the floor\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Ahead of so-called \u2018Freedom Day\u2019 on Monday, Boris Johnson urged people to exercise caution as most restrictions on social contact were lifted in England. With the Prime Minister and Health Secretary currently isolating, and UK daily infections totalling around 50,000, there are warnings that cases will surge over the summer. It was announced this week that some fully vaccinated people in critical roles in England, including NHS and care staff, will be able to continue working even if told to self-isolate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Last Thursday, in the West Midlands,\nthe Prime Minister set out his post-pandemic vision to level up the UK, outlining\n government plans to “rewrite the\nrulebook”<\/em> on local devolution, adding \u201cWith every day that goes by\nour economy is slowly and cautiously picking itself up off the floor,\nbusinesses are opening their doors\u2026 it is the mission of this government to\nensure that in so far as COVID has entrenched problems and deepened\ninequalities \u2013 we need now to work double hard to overturn those inequalities\u2026\nso that everyone everywhere feels the benefits of that recovery and that we\nbuild back better across the whole of the UK.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Global stock markets fell at the\nstart of the week, as fears that soaring infection rates will derail the trajectory of the economic recovery\nintensified. After the Dow\u2019s worst day of the year so far, global shares stabilised on Tuesday as economic\ngrowth concerns eased.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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UK job vacancies continue\ntheir ascent <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Data released from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) last\nweek, shows the UK labour market continues to recover. Despite remaining below\npre-pandemic levels, the number of payroll employees increased again in June,\ntotalling 28.9 million, up 356,000 month-on-month. For the first time since the\nbeginning of the pandemic, some UK regions saw payroll numbers rise above\npre-pandemic levels, including Northern Ireland, North East England, East\nMidlands and the North West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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In the three-month period to June, UK job vacancies surpassed\npre-pandemic levels, driven\nby vacancies in the hospitality and retail sectors, with 862,000 jobs available\nin the three months to the end of June, 77,500 higher than the first three\nmonths of 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Director of Economic Statistics at ONS, Darren Morgan, commented, “The\nlabour market is continuing to recover, with the number of employees on payroll\nup again strongly in June. However, it is still over 200,000 down on\npre-pandemic levels, while a large number of workers remain on furlough.”<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Small\nshops face mountain of debt<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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A new report from veteran\nretailer Bill Grimsey, highlights how independent high street business debt has\nquadrupled over the last year, with Britain facing a \u2018tsunami\u2019 <\/em>of shop\nclosures this autumn, unless the government steps in. The report reveals\nthat the UK’s small shopkeepers are grappling with debt of \u00a31.7bn, having\nsurvived the pandemic by borrowing and now face the task of paying it back. Grimsey\ncommented, “Our high street independents have experienced a new-found\nappreciation during lockdown. But they’ve also been forced to take on\ngovernment-backed loans, which they would not have normally been able to get\nbecause their balance sheets wouldn’t allow it. Now they are struggling to\nmanage a mountain of debt and need help.”<\/em> <\/strong>The report concludes that Britain\nwill not be able to \u2018build back better\u2019<\/em> unless policymakers choose\nto look beyond infrastructure investment to \u2018equally prioritise small\nbusiness and strengthen the social fabric of high streets.\u2019<\/em>  <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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China’s\neconomic rebound loses momentum<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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New official figures show that the Chinese economic rebound has\nstarted to slow, with economists\nraising concerns over the recovery of the world’s second largest economy. Failing\nto hit the economists’ forecasts of 8.1% growth, Chinese GDP increased by 7.9%\nin Q2 (compared to the same time last year). Despite better-than-expected\ngrowth for industrial production and retail sales, shipping firms have been impacted\nby backlogs in the supply chain which have hampered factory output. Record high\ncommodity prices pushed factory inflation to the highest level in over ten\nyears. The National Bureau of Statistics report outlined, \u2018China’s economy\nsustained a steady recovery with the production and demand picking up\u2019, <\/em>before\ngoing on to caution, \u2018The epidemic continues to mutate globally and external\ninstabilities and uncertainties abound.\u2019<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Here to\nhelp<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Financial\nadvice is key, so please do not hesitate to get in contact with any questions\nor concerns you may have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The value of investments can go down as well\nas up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. The past is not a\nguide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be\nrepeated.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWith every day that goes by our economy is slowly and cautiously picking itself up off the floor\u201d Ahead of so-called \u2018Freedom Day\u2019 on Monday, Boris Johnson urged people to exercise caution as most restrictions on social contact were lifted in England. With the Prime Minister and Health Secretary currently isolating, and UK daily infections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,112],"tags":[],"hd_content_source":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1128,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions\/1128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"hd_content_source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hd_content_source?post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}