Misery lurks beneath the figures

While Britain's economic figures look healthy, there's no disguising what lurks beneath, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

"Whose Recovery?" That was the title of a speech given by Andy Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, a few weeks ago. In it he pointed out something that MoneyWeek readers know already and that Theresa May also appears to understand: that while UK GDP growth looks like it has recovered nicely since the financial crisis (GDP is up 7%, employment up 6% and wealth up 30%), the headline numbers cover up a good few miseries.

The first is that much of the rise in our GDP has been accounted for by population growth; GDP per head is up only 1% or so since 2009. The second is that our GDP numbers measure (as best they can) income from all UK activities. But that doesn't mean, as Haldane notes, that all the income stays in the UK. Subtract the share flowing overseas (3% of GDP a record high), and the income not distributed to households by companies (which save some revenue), and the truth is that average household income has "effectively stagnated" over the last seven years.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.