Since the financial crisis of 2008–9, the UK has experienced the lowest growth in productivity for the past 250 years. This is the conclusion of a recent paper published in the National Institute Economics Review. Titled, Is the UK Productivity Slowdown Unprecedented, the authors, Nicholas Crafts of the University of Sussex and Terence C Mills of Loughborough University, argue that ‘the current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7 per cent below the pre-2008 trend path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity shortfall ten years after the start of a downturn.’
According to ONS figures, productivity (output per hour worked) peaked in 2007 Q4. It did not regain this level until 2011 Q1 and by 2019 Q3 was still only 2.4% above the 2007 Q4 level. This represents an average annual growth rate over the period of just 0.28%. By contrast, the average annual growth rate of productivity for the 35 years prior to 2007 was 2.30%.
The chart illustrates this and shows the productivity gap, which is the amount by which output per hour is below trend output per hour from 1971 to 2007. By 2019 Q3 this gap was 27.5%. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the chart.) Clearly, this lack of growth in productivity over the past 12 years has severe implications for living standards. Labour productivity is a key determinant of potential GDP, which, in turn, is the major limiter of actual GDP.
Crafts and Mills explore the reasons for this dramatic slowdown in productivity. They identify three primary reasons.
The first is a slowdown in the impact of developments in ICT on productivity. The office and production revolutions that developments in computing and its uses had brought about have now become universal. New developments in ICT are now largely in terms of greater speed of computing and greater sophistication of software. Perhaps with an acceleration in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics, productivity growth may well increase in the relatively near future (see third article below).
The second cause is the prolonged impact of the banking crisis, with banks more cautious about lending and firms more cautious about borrowing for investment. What is more, the decline in investment directly impacts on potential output, and layoffs or restructuring can leave people with redundant skills. There is a hysteresis effect.
The third cause identified by Crafts and Mills is Brexit. Brexit and the uncertainty surrounding it has resulted in a decline in investment and ‘a diversion of top-management time towards Brexit planning and a relative shrinking of highly-productive exporters compared with less productive domestically orientated firms’.
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Paper
Questions
- How suitable is output (GDP) per hour as a measure of labour productivity?
- Compare this measure of productivity with other measures.
- According to Crafts and Mills, what is the size of the impact of each of their three explanations of the productivity slowdown?
- Would you expect the growth in productivity to return to pre-2007 levels over the coming years? Explain.
- Explain the underlying model for obtaining trend productivity growth rates used by Crafts and Mills.
- Explain and comment on each of the six figures in the Crafts and Mills paper.
- What policies should the government adopt to increase productivity growth?
Confidence figures suggest that sentiment weakened across several sectors in June with significant falls recorded in retail and construction. This is consistent with the monthly GDP estimates from the ONS which suggest that output declined in March and April by 0.1 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively. The confidence data point to further weakness in growth down the line. Furthermore, it poses the risk of fuelling a snowball effect with low growth being amplified and sustained by low confidence.
Chart 1 shows the confidence balances reported by the European Commission each month since 2007. It highlights the collapse in confidence across all sectors around the time of the financial crisis before a strong and sustained recovery in the 2010s. However, in recent months confidence indicators have eased significantly, undoubtedly reflecting the heightened uncertainty around Brexit. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
Between June 2016 and June 2019, the confidence balances have fallen by at least 8 percentage points. In the case of the construction the fall is 14 points while in the important service sector, which contributes about 80 per cent of the economy’s national income, the fall is as much as 15 points.
Changes in confidence are thought, in part, to reflect levels of economic uncertainty. In particular, they may reflect the confidence around future income streams with greater uncertainty pulling confidence down. This is pertinent because of the uncertainty around the UK’s future trading relationships following the 2016 referendum which saw the UK vote to leave the EU. In simple terms, uncertainty reduces the confidence people and businesses have when forming expectations of what they can expect to earn in the future.
Greater uncertainty and, hence, lower confidence tend to make people and businesses more prudent. The caution that comes from prudence counteracts the inherent tendency of many of us to be impatient. This impatience generates an impulse to spend now. On the other hand, prudence encourages us to take actions to increase net worth, i.e. wealth. This may be through reducing our exposure to debt, perhaps by looking to repay debts or choosing to borrow smaller sums than we may have otherwise done. Another option may be to increase levels of saving. In either case, the effect of greater prudence is the postponement of spending. Therefore, in times of high uncertainty, like those of present, people and businesses would be expected to want to have greater financial resilience because they are less confident about what the future holds.
To this point, the saving ratio – the proportion of disposable income saved by households – has remained historically low. In Q1 2019 the saving ratio was 4.4 per cent, well below its 60-year average of 8.5 per cent. This appears to contradict the idea that households respond to uncertainty by increasing saving. However, at least in part, the squeeze seen over many years following the financial crisis on real earnings, i.e. inflation-adjusted earnings, restricted the ability of many to increase saving. With real earnings having risen again over the past year or so, though still below pre-crisis levels, households may have taken this opportunity to use earnings growth to support spending levels rather than, as we shall see shortly, looking to borrow.
Another way in which the desire for greater financial resilience can affect behaviour is through the appetite to borrow. In the case of consumers, it could reduce borrowing for consumption, while in the case of firms it could reduce borrowing for investment, i.e. spending on capital, such as that on buildings and machinery. The reduced appetite for borrowing may also be mirrored by a tightening of credit conditions by financial institutions if they perceive lending to be riskier or want to increase their own financial capacity to absorb future shocks.
Chart 2 shows consumer confidence alongside the annual rate of growth of consumer credit (net of repayments) to individuals by banks and building societies. Consumer credit is borrowing by individuals to finance current expenditure on goods and services and it comprises borrowing through credit cards, overdraft facilities and other loans and advances, for example those financing the purchase of cars or other large ticket items. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
The chart allows us to view the confidence-borrowing relationship for the past 25 years or so. It suggests a fairly close association between consumer confidence and consumer credit growth. Whether changes in confidence occur ahead of changes in borrowing is debatable. However, the easing of confidence following the outcome of the EU referendum vote in June 2016 does appear to have led subsequently to an easing in the annual growth of consumer credit. From its peak of 10.9 per cent in the autumn of 2016, the annual growth rate of consumer credit dropped to 5.6 per cent in May 2019.
The easing of credit growth helps put something of a brake on consumer spending. It is, however, unlikely to affect all categories of spending equally. Indeed, the ONS figures for May on retail sales shows a mixed picture for the retail sector. Across the sector as a whole, the 3 month-on-3 month growth rate for the volume of purchases stood at 1.6 per cent, having fallen as low as 0.1 percent in December of last year. However, the 3 month-on-3 month growth rate for spending volumes in department stores, which might be especially vulnerable to a slowdown in credit, fell for the ninth consecutive month.
Going forward, the falls in confidence might be expected to lead to further efforts by the household sector, as well as by businesses, to ensure their financial resilience. The vulnerability of households, despite the slowdown in credit growth, so soon after the financial crisis poses a risk for a hard landing for the sector. After falls in national output in March and April, the next monthly GDP figures to be released on 10 July will be eagerly anticipated.
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Questions
- Which of the following statements is likely to be more accurate: (a) Confidence drives economic activity or (b) Economic activity drives confidence?
- Explain the difference between confidence as a source of economic volatility as compared to an amplifier of volatility?
- Discuss the links between confidence, economic uncertainty and financial resilience.
- Discuss the ways in which people and businesses could improve their financial resilience to adverse shocks.
- What are the potential dangers to the economy of various sectors being financially distressed or exposed?
Latest resesarch from the independent American think tank The Conference Board paints a worrying picture about the growth of UK labour productivity. While global growth in labour productivity has weakened following the financial crisis, its weakness in the UK is singled out in the Board’s 2019 Productivity Brief. It finds that amongst large mature economies the decline in labour productivity growth rates has been greatest in the UK. This has important implications for the country’s longer-term well-being and, specifically, it peoples’ living standards.
The UK saw the growth in real GDP (national output) fall from 1.8 per cent in 2017 to 1.4 per cent in 2018. The Conference Board predicts that this will fall further to 0.8 per cent in 2019. In the context of living standards, the growth in real GDP per capita is particularly important. An increase in the population will, other things being equal, lower living standards because more people will be sharing a given amount of real national income. The growth in real GDP per capita fell from 1.1 per cent in 2017 to 0.7 per cent in 2018 and is predicted to fall to just 0.1 per cent in 2019.
Chart 1 shows the annual rates of growth in real GDP and real GDP per capita from the 1950s. The average growth rates are 2.4 and 1.9 per cent respectively. The other series shown is the annual growth in real GDP per person employed. This is a measure of the growth in labour productivity. Its average annual growth rate is also 1.9 per cent. This illustrates the intrinsic long-run relationship between labour productivity growth and the growth rate of GDP per capita and hence in general living stanadards. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
In the short term, rates of growth in output per worker (labour productivity) and GDP per capita (general living standards) can be less similar. For example, when unemployment rates rise labour productivity rates may be little affected despite GDP per capita falling. Nonetheless, the important point here is the close long-run relationship between the growth in labour productivity and GDP per capita. This then raises an important question: what factors contribute to the growth in output and labour productivity?
An approach known as growth accounting helps to identify four key contributors to the growth of total output. The first is the quantity of labour, commonly measured in labour hours. The second is the quality of labour, also known as labour composition. Third is capital services which are physical inputs into production and include machinery, structures and IT capital. Capital services are affected by quantity and quality, but, unlike labour, it is practically more difficult to separate out these dimensions. Fourth, is Total Factor Productivity (TFP).
TFP it is essentially the residual contribution to output growth that cannot be explained by changes in the quantity and quality of the individual inputs. Hence, in principle, it is capturing changes in how effectively the labour and capital inputs are being employed and combined in production. The Conference Board’s Productivity Brief describes the growth in TFP as providing ‘a more accurate picture of the overall efficiency by which capital, labour and skills are combined in the production process’.
Chart 2 shows Conference Board estimates of the percentage point contribution of these four sources of growth since 1990. Over this period, output growth averaged 2 per cent per year. The contribution of capital services and, hence, what is known as capital accumulation is particularly significant at 1.5 percentage points per year. This has been significantly larger than the contribution of labour hours which averaged only 0.3 percentage points per year since 1990. This evidences the importance played by capital deepening for output growth in the UK. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
Capital deepening captures the growth in capital services relative to the growth in the labour input. It takes on even greater significance when we think about the growth in labour productivity since, after all, this is the growth in output relative to the quantity of labour. It is significant though that since 2015 the growth of capital services has contributed only 1 percentage point to output growth while the growth of labour hours has contributed an average of 0.7 percentage points. This points to a slowdown in capital deepening and hence in the growth of labour productivity.
Chart 2 also illustrates the importance of TFP growth to overall output growth. It is also important (along with capital deepening and the growth in labour quality) for the growth in labour productivity. Interestingly, we observe significant fluctuations in the growth of TFP. This is thought to reflect fluctuations in the utilisation of inputs. For example, if the utilisation of inputs falls (rises) when output falls (increases) this will be mirrored by a disproportionately large fall (increase) in TFP. In the longer-term, however, changes in TFP capture aspects of technological progress and advancement that enable more effective production methods and techniques to be deployed. In other words, the growth of TFP captures the ability of production to benefit from the advancement in ideas, products, processes and know-how.
A decline in the growth in TFP growth following the financial crisis is found quite widely in mature economies. The annual rate of growth of TFP across mature economies fell from 0.5 per cent year in 2000-2007 to 0.2 per cent in 2010-2017. In the UK this fall was from 0.5 per cent to -0.1 per cent. Hence, the decline in TFP growth of 0.6 percentage points between 2010 and 2017 was double the 0.3 percentage point fall across all mature economies. In 2018 the Conference Board estimate that TFP in the UK fell by 0.1 percent further exacerbating the downward pressure on labour productivity.
As our final chart shows, it is the magnitude to which labour productivity has eased following the financial crisis that sets the UK apart. While across all mature economies the growth of output per labour hour (another measure of labour productivity growth) fell from an average of 2.3 per cent per year in 2000-2007 to 1.2 per cent in 2010-2017, in the UK the fall was from 2.2 per cent to 0.5 per cent per year. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
While the productivity problem facing the UK is not new, the latest figures comes as a very timely reminder of the extent of the problem. To some extent the uncertainty around Brexit and the negative impact on capital accumulation has only helped to exacerbate the problem. But, this may mask a more systemic problem facing the UK. Getting to the root of this problem matters. It matters most significantly for our long-term wellbeing and prosperity. The productivity gap with our major industrial competitors is a gap that policymakers need not only to be mindful of but one that needs closing.
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Questions
- What do you understand by the term labour productivity. How could we measure it?
- Why is it important to look at the growth of output per capita when assessing the benefits of long-term growth?
- Why is labour productivity important for the long-term well-being of a country?
- What do you understand by the method of growth accounting?
- What is the distinction between capital accumulation and capital deepening?
- What might explain why the growth of labour productivity has been lower in the years following the post-financial crisis?
- What do you understand by Total Factor Productivity (TFP)?
- What does the long-term growth of TFP attempt to capture?
- If you were an economic advisor to the government, what types of policy initiatives might you recommend for a government concerned about low rates of growth of labour productivity?
It is perhaps timely given the ongoing uncertainty around Brexit to revisit and update our blog Desperately seeking confidence written back in January. Consumer and business confidence reflects the sentiment, emotion, or anxiety of consumers and businesses. Confidence surveys therefore try to capture these feelings of optimism or pessimism. They may then provide us with timely information for the short-term prospects for private-sector spending. For example, declining levels of confidence might be expected to play a part in weakening the growth of consumption and investment spending.
Attempts are made to measure confidence through the use of surveys. One long-standing survey is that conducted for the European Commission. Each month consumers and firms across the European Union are asked a series of questions, the answers to which are used to compile indicators of consumer and business confidence. For instance, consumers are asked about how they expect their financial position to change. They are offered various options such as ‘get a lot better, ‘get a lot worse’ and balances are then calculated on the basis of positive and negative replies.
The chart plots confidence in the UK for consumers and different sectors of business since the mid 1990s. The chart captures the volatility of confidence. This volatility is generally greater amongst businesses than consumers, and especially so in the construction sector. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
Confidence measures rebounded across all sectors during the 2010s, with positive balances being recorded consistently from 2013 to 2016 in services, retail and industry. Subsequently, confidence indicators became more erratic though often remaining at above-average levels. However, confidence indicators have eased across the board in recent months. In some cases the easing has been stark. For example, the confidence balance in the service sector, which contributes about 80 per cent of the economy’s national income, fell from +10.9 in February 2018 to -16.2 in February 2019, though recovering slightly to -9.2 in March 2019.
Chart 2 shows how the recent easing of consumer confidence has seen the confidence balance fall below its long-term (median) average of -7. In March 2019 the balance stood at -11.7 the lowest figure since November 2013. To put the easing into further perspective, the consumer confidence balance had been as high as +8.2 in September 2015. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
Changes in confidence are used frequently as an example of a demand shock. In reality changes in consumer confidence are often likely to be an amplifier of shocks rather than the source. For example, the collapse in aggregate demand in 2007/8 that followed the ‘credit crunch’, the severe tightening of credit conditions and financial distress of many sectors of the economy is likely to have been amplified by the collapse in consumer confidence. The weakening of confidence since 2016 is perhaps a purer example of a ‘confidence shock’. Nonetheless, falls in confidence, whether they amplify existing shocks or are the source of shocks, are often a signal of greater economic uncertainty.
Greater uncertainty is likely to go and hand in hand with lower confidence and is likely to reflect greater uncertainty about future income streams. The result is that people and businesses become more prudent. In the context of households this implies a greater willingness to engage in self-insurance through increased saving. This is known as buffer stock or precautionary saving. Alternatively, people may reducing levels of borrowing. In uncertain times prudence can dominate our impatience that encourages us to spend.
Chart 3 plots the paths of the UK household-sector saving ratio and consumer confidence. The saving ratio approximates the proportion of disposable income saved by the household sector. What we might expect to see, if greater uncertainty induces buffer-stock saving, is for falls in confidence to lead to a rise in the saving ratio. Conversely, less uncertainty as proxied by a rise in confidence would lead to a fall in the saving ratio. (Click here to download a PowerPoint of the chart.)
The chart provides some evidence of this. The early 1990s and late 2000s coincided with both waning confidence and a rising saving ratio, whilst the rising confidence seen in the late 1990s coincided with a fall in the saving ratio. However, the easing of confidence since 2016 has coincided with a period where the saving ratio has been historically low. In the first quarter of 2017 the saving ratio was just 3.3 per cent. Although the saving ratio has ticked up a little, in the final quarter of 2018 it remained historically low at just 4.9 per cent. Hence, the available data on the saving ratio does not provide clear evidence of the more cautious behaviour we might expect with waning confidence.
Consider now patterns in the consumer confidence balance alongside the annual rate of growth of consumer credit (net of repayments) to individuals by banks and building societies. Consumer credit is borrowing by individuals to finance current expenditure on goods and services.
Data on consumer credit is more timely than that for the saving ratio. Therefore, Chart 4 shows the relationship between consumer confidence and consumer credit into 2019. We observe a reasonably close association consumer credit growth and consumer confidence. Certainty, the recent easing in confidence is mirrored by an easing in the annual growth of net consumer credit. (Click here to download a PowerPoint of the chart.)
The year-to-year growth in net consumer credit has eased considerably since the peak of 10.9 per cent in November 2016. In February 2019 the annual growth rate of net consumer credit had fallen back to 6.3 per cent, its lowest rate since September 2014. As we noted in our recent blog Riding the consumer credit cycle (again) it is hard to look much past the effect of Brexit in acting as a lid on the growth in consumer credit. Therefore, while the recent falls in consumer confidence have yet to markedly affect the saving ratio they may instead be driving the slowdown in consumer credit. The effect will be to weaken the growth of consumer spending.
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Questions
- Draw up a series of factors that you think might affect both consumer and business confidence. How similar are both these lists?
- Which of the following statements is likely to be more accurate: (a) Confidence drives economic activity or (b) Economic activity drives confidence?
- What macroeconomic indicators would those compiling the consumer and business confidence indicators expect each indicator to predict?
- What is meant by the concept of ‘prudence’ in the context of spending? What factors might determine the level of prudence
- How might prudence be expected to affect spending behaviour?
- How might we distinguish between confidence ‘shocks’ and confidence as a ‘propagator’ of shocks?
- What is meant by buffer stock or precautionary saving? Draw up a list of factors that are likely to affect levels of buffer stock saving.
- If economic uncertainty is perceived to have increased how could this affect the consumption, saving and borrowing decisions of people?
Consumer credit is borrowing by individuals to finance current expenditure on goods and services. Consumer credit is distinct from lending secured on dwellings (referred to more simply as ‘secured lending’). Consumer credit comprises lending on credit cards, lending through overdraft facilities and other loans and advances, for example those financing the purchase of cars. We consider here recent trends in the flows of consumer credit in the UK and discuss their implications.
Analysing consumer credit data is important because the growth of consumer credit has implications for the financial wellbeing or financial health of individuals and, of course, for financial institutions. As we shall see shortly, the data on consumer credit is consistent with the existence of credit cycles. Cycles in consumer credit have the potential to be not only financially harmful but economically destabilising. After all, consumer credit is lending to finance spending and therefore the amount of lending can have significant effects on aggregate demand and economic activity.
Data on consumer credit are available monthly and so provide an early indication of movements in economic activity. Furthermore, because lending flows are likely to be sensitive to changes in the confidence of both borrowers and lenders, changes in the growth of consumer credit can indicate turning points in the economy and, hence, in the macroeconomic environment.
Chart 1 shows the annual flows of net consumer credit since 2000 – the figures are in £ billions. Net flows are gross flows less repayments. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.) In January 2005 the annual flow of net consumer credit peaked at £23 billion, the equivalent of just over 2.5 per cent of annual disposable income. This helped to fuel spending and by the final quarter of the year, the economy’s annual growth rate had reached 4.8 per cent, significantly about its long-run average of 2.5 per cent.
By 2009 net consumer credit flows had become negative. This meant that repayments were greater than additional flows of credit. It was not until 2012 that the annual flow of net consumer credit was again positive. Yet by November 2016, the annual flow of net consumer credit had rebounded to over £19 billion, the equivalent of just shy of 1.5 per cent of annual disposable income. This was the largest annual flow of consumer credit since September 2005.
Although the strength of consumer credit in 2016 was providing the economy with a timely boost to growth in the immediate aftermath of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, it nonetheless raised concerns about its sustainability. Specifically, given the short amount of time that had elapsed since the financial crisis and the extreme levels of financial distress that had been experienced by many sectors of the economy, how susceptible would people and organisations be to a future economic slowdown and/or rise in interest rates?
The extent to which the economy experiences consumer credit cycles can be seen even more readily by looking at the 12-month growth rate in the net consumer credit. In essence, this mirrors the growth rate in the stock of consumer credit. Chart 2 evidences the double-digit growth rates in net consumer credit lending experienced during the first half of the 2000s. Growth rates then eased but, as the financial crisis unfolded, they plunged sharply. (Click here to download a PowerPoint copy of the chart.)
Yet, as Chart 2 shows, consumer credit growth began to recover quickly from 2013 so that by 2016 the annual growth rate of net consumer credit was again in double figures. In November 2016 the 12-month growth rate of net consumer credit peaked at 10.9 per cent. Thereafter, the growth rate has continually eased. In January 2019 the annual growth rate of net consumer credit had fallen back to 6.5 per cent, the lowest rate since October 2014.
The easing of consumer credit is likely to have been influenced, in part, by the resumption in the growth of real earnings from 2018 (see Getting real with pay). Yet, it is hard to look past the economic uncertainties around Brexit.
Uncertainty tends to cause people to be more cautious. With the heightened uncertainty that has has characterised recent times, it is likely that for many people and businesses prudence has dominated impatience. Therefore, in summary, it appears that prudence is helping to steer borrowing along a downswing in the credit cycle. As it does, it helps to put a further brake on spending and economic growth.
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Questions
- What is the difference between gross and net lending?
- Consider the argument that we should be worried more by excessive growth in consumer credit than on lending secured on dwellings?
- How could we measure whether different sectors of the economy had become financially distressed?
- What might explain why an economy experiences credit cycles?
- Explain how the growth in net consumer credit can affect economic activity?
- If people are consumption smoothers, how can credit cycles arise?
- What are the potential policy implications of credit cycles?
- It is said that when making financial decisions people face an inter-temporal choice. Explain what you understand this by this concept.
- If economic uncertainty is perceived to have increased how could this affect the consumption, saving and borrowing decisions of people?
