Our chart this week compares the UK public finances for the current fiscal year with the overall size of the economy, illustrating how taxes are expected to amount to 36% of GDP and expenditure 47% of GDP.
The latest official forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for the current fiscal year ending 31 March 2023 is for a shortfall (or ‘deficit’) of £177bn between receipts of £1,005bn and expenditure of £1,182bn. The largest component of receipts is taxation, which is forecast to amount to £910bn.
Our chart puts these numbers into context by comparing them with the forecast for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of £2,497bn in 2022/23, highlighting how taxes are expected to amount to 36% of GDP, receipts including other income to 40% of GDP, and expenditure to 47% of GDP, resulting in a deficit amounting to 7% of GDP.
As many commentators have noted, taxes are at a historically high level, with taxation at its highest level as a share of economic activity since 1949. This is unsurprising given the combination of many more people living longer lives and the financial commitments made by successive governments to pay for pensions, health and (to an extent) social care.
Expenditure is also at historically high levels, with energy support packages adding to recurring expenditure of around 43% or 44% of GDP. This is below the peak of 53% of GDP a couple of years ago at the height of the pandemic.
As a consequence, the shortfall between receipts and expenditure of 7% of GDP is elevated compared with the 2% to 3% of GDP ‘normal’ range, although still below the 15% of GDP seen in 2020/21 during the pandemic and 10% of GDP in 2009/10 during the financial crisis.
The increase in the corporation tax rate to 25% from April means that receipts are expected to increase to 37% of GDP over the next few years, leading to the total of taxes and other receipts rising to 41%. At the same time total expenditure is expected to stay at 47% of GDP in 2023/24 before falling back to 45% in 2024/25, 44% in 2025/26 and 2026/27, and 43% in 2027/28.
Unlike in previous generations, the government is restricted in its ability to cut other areas of spending to cover expected further rises in spending on pensions, health and social care as the number of pensioners continues to grow. Savings in the defence and security budgets are no longer possible now that spending has fallen to not much more than the NATO minimum of 2% of GDP, down from in excess of 10% back in the day, while pressures across many other areas of the public sector will make achieving the cost savings already assumed in the forecasts a significant challenge.
Inflation is believed to have peaked last quarter before being forecast to fall significantly over the course of 2023. We hope.
Our first chart of 2023 is on the prospects for consumer price inflation (CPI) over the course of the coming year, based on the latest forecasts for inflation from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that were released on 21 December 2022.
The OBR’s calculations suggest that CPI should come down significantly over the next four quarters to reach 3.8% by the end of the year, ‘only’ 0.8% above the Bank of England target range of 1% to 3%. The return of inflation to more moderate levels should help stabilise an economy that is currently in a pretty bad place, although it is important to understand that prices will still be rising, just at a slower pace than they have been over the course of the past year.
The chart illustrates how inflation started to rise in 2021, from a below-target 0.6% in Q1, to 2.1% in Q2, then 2.8% in Q3, before jumping to 4.9% at the end of 2021. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in the first quarter of 2022 and its consequences for global energy prices drove the inflation rate even higher, to 6.2% in Q1, 9.2% in Q2 and 10% in Q3, before rising to a forecast peak of 11.1% in Q4 of 2022. The OBR then goes on to forecast that the rate of price increases experienced by consumers will moderate in the coming year, down to 10.2% in Q1, 8.9% in Q2, 6.9% and then 3.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Of course, economic forecasts of this nature are inherently uncertain, especially given the role that volatile energy prices play, both in their own right but also as a cost input to many other products and services. For consumers, the withdrawal of the Energy Price Guarantee will mean energy bills are likely to rise significantly in the second quarter despite falling wholesale prices.
The chart does not extend into 2024, when the forecasts are even more uncertain than for the current year. The OBR suggests that inflation could turn negative during 2024 (Q1: 2.5%; Q2: 0.4%; Q3: -0.2%; Q4: -0.1%) and 2025 (Q1: -0.1%; Q2: -0.6%; Q3: -1.1%; Q4: -1.3%), before heading back to target in 2026 (Q1: -1.0%; Q2: -0.4%; Q3: 0.9%; Q4: 1.2%). Deflation brings with it a whole different set of economic challenges to be faced but, fortunately, forecasts are less accurate the further into the future they go. The hope is that the Bank of England will be able to time its switch in monetary policy actions from countering inflation to countering deflation just right in order to avoid this potential outcome.
Either way, the prospect of inflation coming down over the coming year is a positive amid an otherwise very bleak economic picture for the UK as we begin 2023.
Our final chart of 2022 shows how spending on Christmas is expected to fall significantly this year as the cost-of-living crisis takes its toll on family finances.
PwC’s annual pre-Christmas survey indicates that spending on Christmas was expected to be below pre-pandemic levels, with average spending of £412 in December 2019 (before the pandemic) increasing to £426 in December 2021, before falling to £393 this Christmas.
The chart takes inflation into account to provide an illustration of what has happened to average spending in real terms. Excluding December 2020, when Christmas was cancelled for many of us, average spending would have been £23 higher if it had kept pace with inflation of 5.5% over the two years between 2019 and 2021, implying spending was expected to be £9 lower last Christmas than it had been before the pandemic.
The effect is even more marked this year, when keeping pace with consumer price inflation of 10.7% would lead to an extra £23 being spent compared with last Christmas. In this year’s survey, respondents expected to spend much less than in previous years, with an implied reduction of £79 or 17% after taking account of inflation.
We have used the overall CPI index as of November of each year presented in the chart, but in practice inflation runs at different rates for each element of spending. Food and non-alcoholic beverage inflation is currently running at over 16% meaning Christmas dinner is likely to cost even more this year, which for many is likely to offset any real terms ‘savings’ on alcohol where inflation is running at just over 4%.
According to PwC, 50% of spending on Christmas presents was expected to be completed around or before Black Friday in November, while 44% was planned for early to mid-December and 6% to be bought in the last week before Christmas or later. PwC also reports that the majority of Christmas present buying is now done online, with 55% ordered for delivery, 10% through click and collect, and just over a third to be purchased in-store.
Irrespective of how inflation is calculated, what is clear is that there is a substantial reduction in spending on Christmas festivities in 2022. This highlights how household finances are under significant pressure as we come to the end of the third year of the pandemic.
The ICAEW chart of the week is taking a break over the Christmas period and will return in 2023 with new charts on diverse subjects.
My chart this week looks at the reserve currency assets that comprise the 660.7bn SDRs issued by the International Monetary Fund.
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are reserve assets issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ‘international central bank’ for central banks.
Just as national central banks create money by issuing currency in exchange for debt, the IMF creates its own form of ‘international money’ in the form of SDRs, balanced by long-term debt owed to the IMF by its member countries.
To date, the IMF has issued 660.7bn SDRs, most recently in August 2021 when 456.5bn SDRs were issued to provide additional liquidity to member countries during the pandemic.
Countries are able to exchange the SDRs they are issued with for the underlying currencies that make up each SDR, providing them with international liquidity when they need dollars, euros, yuan renminbi, yen or pounds sterling or – in many cases – just dollars. According to the latest five-year currency weightings determined in July 2022, 1 SDR should be exchangeable for 0.57813 US dollars, 0.37379 euros, 1.0993 Chinese yuan, 13.452 Japanese yen and 0.08087 UK pounds.
The chart illustrates what this means for the total of 660.7bn of SDRs in issue, which as of 5 Dec 2022 was calculated to be worth approximately $880bn in total based on a value of $1.33 per SDR. The total comprised $382bn in US dollars, €247bn in euros (worth $261bn at 5 Dec 2022), ¥726bn Chinese yuan ($105bn), ¥8,888bn Japanese yen ($66bn) and £53bn in UK pounds ($66bn).
In effect, 43.4% of the currency basket making up each SDR was US dollars, 29.7% was euros, 11.9% was Chinese yuan, 7.5% was Japanese yen and 7.5% was UK pounds.
Despite SDRs being an ‘international reserve asset’ that central banks and member countries can use to manage their own currencies, the IMF insists that SDRs are not a currency in their own right. Instead, it stresses that SDRs are merely an ‘accounting unit’ to be used for IMF transactions. However, despite these protestations, the IMF has concluded that SDRs are the functional currency for the purposes of its financial statements prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.
The strength of the dollar means that SDRs at $1.33 each are worth $56bn less than the blended average rate of $1.42 each when they originally issued. This is because the non-dollar components of the currency basket, especially the euro and sterling, have fallen in value in relation to the US dollar in recent years.
At less than a trillion dollars, SDRs may seem quite small in comparison with the vast flows of money around the world. However, their importance to the international monetary system cannot be understated, keeping the financial wheels turning and providing central banks (especially those in smaller nations) with essential liquidity when they need it most.
Our chart this week delves into this by looking at language proficiency, illustrating how 91.1% (52.6m) of the population in England and Wales speaks English (or Welsh in Wales) as their main language.
A further 7.1% (4.1m) are classified as proficient in English, broken down into 3.9% (2.3m) who speak English very well and 3.2% (1.8m) who speak English well. The remaining 1.8% (1.1m) of the population can be broken down between 1.5% (0.9m) who speak some English and 0.3% (0.2m) who speak no English at all.
The top 10 languages spoken by those for whom English or Welsh was not their main language comprised Polish (612,000 or 1.1%), Romanian (472,000 or 0.8%), Panjabi (291,000 or 0.5%), Urdu (270,000 or 0.5%), Portuguese (225,000 or 0.4%), Spanish (215,000 or 0.4%), Arabic (204,000 or 0.3%), Bengali (199,000 or 0.3%), Gujarati (189,000 or 0.3%) and Italian (160,000 or 0.3%).
Surprisingly, the release does not include data on the proportion of Welsh language speakers in Wales, with a more detailed analysis scheduled to be published by the Welsh Government on 6 December.
The proportion of people who speak English (or Welsh in Wales) as their main language has dropped from 92.3% in the last census in 2011 to 91.1% in 2021, while the proportion of those with another main language who are proficient in English increased from 6.1% in 2011 to 7.1% in 2021. The proportion who do not speak English or who do not speak English at all increased from 1.6% in 2011 to 1.8% in 2021.
While the numbers not able to speak English proficiently remain relatively small as a proportion of the overall population, this still represents more than a million people who are unable to function effectively. Many will be newer arrivals in the process of learning English, but some will be longer-term residents who would benefit from better English language skills.
One question for both local authorities and central government is how much to invest in English language teaching. Finding the money is likely to be difficult at a time of constrained public expenditure budgets, but there may be savings elsewhere such as the cost of interpreters.
The latest migration statistics for the year to June 2022 come with a health warning from the ONS that its ‘experimental and provisional’ numbers for people movements during a pandemic may not be representative of long-term trends.
On 24 November 2022 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its latest ‘experimental’ statistics on net migration, provisionally reporting that net long-term migration to the UK amounted to 504,000 in the year to June 2022. This compares with estimates for net inward migration of 173,000 in the year to June 2021 and 88,000 in the year to June 2020.
This is equivalent to approximately 0.7% of the UK’s total population and is more than double the net inward migration assumption of 237,000 for the same period used by the ONS in its most recent principal long-term projection for the UK population.
The ONS cautions that the middle of a pandemic may not be representative of long-term trends, given possible pent up demand following restrictions in movements in the previous two years.
The ONS also points out the large jump in the number of non-EU students coming to study in the UK, which boosts immigration numbers in the current year. This should in theory reverse in three to four years’ time when many (but not all) of these students return to their home countries or move elsewhere.
Non-EU
As the chart illustrates, immigration from countries outside the EU in the year to June 2022 comprised 151,000 people coming to work in the UK, 277,000 coming to study, 138,000 under settlement schemes and a further 138,000 coming for other reasons. Around 195,000 people from outside the EU were estimated to have left during the year, giving a net inward migration number for non-EU citizens of 509,000. This compares with 157,000 during the year ended 30 June 2021 and 51,000 in the year before that.
The numbers from outside the EU coming to work has increased from 92,000 in the year to June 2021 and 81,000 in the year to June 2020, offsetting some of the reduction in those coming from the EU to work. Those coming to study have increased by an even greater proportion (from 143,000 and 136,000 in the preceding two years respectively), although this may represent pent-up demand from the pandemic when it was much more difficult for students wishing to start courses in the UK. However, the ONS does comment that the new graduate visa that permits students to stay and work in the UK for up to three years after completing their studies may have encouraged more students to come.
The 138,000 arriving under settlement schemes in the year to June 2022 included an estimated 89,000 Ukrainians who were resettled in the UK under the Ukrainian scheme, approximately 21,000 Afghans under the Afghan resettlement scheme and an estimated 28,000 of the 76,000 Hong Kong residents granted British national overseas (BNO) visas during the year.
The ONS does not give a full breakdown of the other reasons why people are coming to the UK, which principally relate to those joining family, those planning to stay temporarily but for longer than a year, refugees granted asylum during the year and any other reason not classified by the ONS. The numbers exclude 35,000 people that arrived by small boats during the period, although those who are granted asylum will show up in the statistics in subsequent periods.
EU
Inward migration from the EU has gone into reverse since the ending of free movement on 31 December 2020, with net outward migration of 51,000 for the year to June 2022 compared with net inward migration of 12,000 and 26,000 in the two preceding years.
As the chart illustrates, the 88,000 people coming from the EU to work, 71,000 to study and 65,000 coming for other reasons – a total of 224,000 people – were more than offset by the 275,000 who left the UK. Those coming to the UK include Irish citizens who do not need visas to live and work in the UK, in addition those coming from other EU countries who now need to apply for visas before they can come to live and work in the UK.
UK
There was a net inflow of 46,000 UK citizens, as an estimated 136,000 who returned home exceeded the estimate of 90,000 who emigrated from the UK. Of those coming back to the UK, 47,000 came to work, 8,000 to join family and 81,000 for other reasons. This compares with net inflows of 4,000 and 11,000 in the two preceding years.
Health warnings
The ONS provides a range of health warnings for this data set, labelling the numbers as ‘experimental and provisional’, as well as relating to an unusual year for international migration. The numbers were affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the settlement schemes for Ukrainians, Afghans and Hong Kong residents, and by the ending in the preceding year of free movement for EU citizens wishing to come to the UK and for UK citizens to live and work in the EU.
From an economic perspective, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will no doubt be pleased at the additional workers that have arrived in the UK at a time of labour shortages, as well as the success of the university sector in attracting international students, some of whom are likely to stay at the end of their courses to work. Many of those arriving to join family or for other reasons will also join the workforce, further helping to grow economic activity.
With a national workforce that would shrink otherwise and many businesses calling for more freedom to recruit from overseas, the Chancellor may well be hoping for higher levels of migration to continue – even if some of his ministerial colleagues are likely to be less than positive about this possibility.
The public finances have been a rollercoaster ride over the last few months, as illustrated by this week’s chart showing how the forecast for the fiscal deficit in 2026/27 has changed since the Spring Budget.
Former Chancellor and now Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed some optimism back in March when he presented his Spring Budget, commenting how he remained committed to achieving a current budget surplus despite the huge amounts spent supporting individuals and businesses through the pandemic, and the support he was then offering to help with energy bills as they started to soar.
My chart this week illustrates how the fiscal situation has deteriorated significantly as rising interest rates, accelerating inflation, and an economy entering recession have adversely affected the public finances. Together with the additional energy support measures announced by then Prime Minister Liz Truss in September, the shortfall between receipts and expenditure is expected to be £270bn higher over a five-year period to 2026/27 than was forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility back in March.
In 2026/27 itself (the year ending 31 March 2027), interest charges are expected to be £47bn higher than previously forecast, while tax receipts and other forecast changes are expected to require an extra £28bn in additional funding (of which £25bn relates to lower tax receipts).
In theory this would result in a deficit of £107bn, which is why it was surprising that then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng decided to announce unfunded tax cuts amounting to £45bn a year by 2026/27. Although Kwarteng was hoping his planned tax cuts would help stimulate the economy, if they hadn’t then the deficit could have risen to more than £150bn, an unsustainable level that caused financial markets to take fright – even if they and we didn’t have the official numbers at that point.
Reversals to the mini-Budget followed as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attempted to reassure markets of their fiscal credibility, with £43bn in tax and spending changes to plug some of the gap. These comprise tax rises amounting to around £23bn a year (more than offsetting the £16bn of tax cuts retained from the mini-Budget), together with £20bn in lower levels of public spending than previously planned.
Together the forecast changes and government decisions give rise to a forecast deficit of £80bn in 2026/27, significantly higher than previously forecast. This is not a comfortable place for the public finances, with the Chancellor having to abandon the government’s previous commitment to achieving a current budget surplus in addition to, as expected, deferring the point at which he expects to see the underlying debt-to-GDP ratio start to fall from three to five years into the future.
Both tax and spending measures primarily involve fiscal drag, freezing tax allowances so that more people are brought into paying tax or paying tax at higher rates, and severely constraining public spending. Although it might be theoretically possible to hold the line on both tax and spending constraint for the next five years, there are likely to be some adjustments needed in the Spring Budget as pressures on public services mount, while the most difficult decisions have been postponed until after the next general election.
My chart this week is about visits abroad by UK residents, illustrating how people have started to travel again following restrictions during the pandemic.
Visits abroad by UK residents have picked up following the depths of the pandemic but have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of visits abroad by UK residents by quarter amounted to 15.9m, 23.7m, 28.7 and 18.9m in 2017; 16.6m, 24.6m, 29.9m and 19.4m in 2018; 18.2m, 25.8m, 30.0m and 19.2m in 2019; 13.9m, 0.9m, 6.2m and 2.8m in 2020; 0.9m, 1.2m, 8.1m and 9.0m in 2021; and 9.4m and 20.4m in the first two quarters of 2022.
Although substantially higher than at the height of COVID-19 travel restrictions, trips abroad during the first half of 2022 were still substantially lower than before the pandemic.
The 20.4m visits during the second quarter of 2022 comprised 15.1m to countries in the European Union, 1.3m to other European countries, 1.0m to North America and 3.0m to other countries around the world. Of these trips, 13.4m were for holidays, 5.1m were to visit friends or relatives, 1.4m for business and 0.5m were for other reasons.
These numbers compare with 25.8m visits in the second quarter of 2019, comprising 18.9m to the EU, 1.4m to other European countries, 1.6m to North America and 3.9m to the rest of the world. This comprised an estimated 16.8m holidays, 6.0m visits to friends or relatives, 2.5m business trips and 0.5m other.
The amount spent by travellers in the second quarter of 2022 was estimated to be £15.8bn, an average of approximately £775 per visit. This compares with an average of around £630 in the second quarter of 2019, reflecting a weaker pound, inflation and the mix of travellers and countries visited.
Trips abroad during the key summer quarter of July to September 2022 has yet to be released by the ONS, so we wait to see whether there will be anywhere near the peak of 30.0m visits recorded in Q3 of 2019.
My chart this week illustrates how home broadband capabilities have been improving in recent years, although still far short of ambitions to provide ultrafast speeds to most households across the UK.
Ofcom recently published its latest data on UK home broadband performance, highlighting how nearly nine in ten (87%) of UK households take a home fixed broadband service.
Based on data as of March 2022, Ofcom reports that connection speeds have continued to improve, with the median average download speed of UK home broadband connections increasing by 18% to 59.4 megabits per second (Mbit/s or Mbps) over the year to March 2022. Over the same period the median average upload speed increased by 9% to 10.7 Mbit/s.
The chart illustrates how speeds have improved since November 2018, when 16% of households had average 24-hour download speeds of 10 Mbit/s or less, 27% had ‘high-speed’ connections (over 10 Mbit/s up to 30 Mbit/s), 41% had superfast broadband (over 30 Mbit/s up to 100 Mbit/s), 15% had extra-superfast broadband (over 100 Mbit/s up to 300 Mbit/s) and just 1% had ultrafast connections over 300 Mbit/s. Overall this meant 43% of households were on what used to be considered high-speed or slower connections and 57% were on superfast or ultrafast connections.
By March 2022, households on slower connections below 10 Mbit/s (mostly legacy ADSL) had fallen to 4% and high-speed connections (10-30 Mbit/s) had fallen to 13%, a drop of 26 percentage points in the proportion of households with high-speed or slower broadband to 17%. The proportion on superfast or higher speeds had increased to 83%, with 58% on superfast (30-100 Mbit/s), 18% on extra-superfast (100-300 Mbit/s) and 7% on ultrafast connections in excess of 300 Mbit/s.
With broadband increasing in popularity, future charts are likely to feature the proportion of gigabit or hyperfast connections of more than 1,000 Mbit/s, while the number of households on less than 30 Mbit/s – now accepted to be too slow for most purposes – should continue to fall as those households upgrade to faster services.
The challenge for Ofcom is in how to improve both rural connectivity and performance, with median average peak-time downloads of 39.4 Mbit/s in rural areas compared with 62.1 Mbit/s in urban areas.
The ‘hyperinflationary’ increase in broadband speeds over recent years suggests that there is a case for redefining the ‘currency’ of broadband speed, given that ‘high-speed’ connections are now commonly accepted to be too slow for practical usage, ‘superfast’ describes a basic level of internet service and ‘ultrafast’ connections are no longer the fastest speeds available.
My chart this week looks at the changes in the numbers of people between 16 and 64 who are employed, unemployed or economically inactive over the past three years.
According to the Office for National Statistics, on a seasonally adjusted basis the working-age population (ages 16 to 64) comprised 31,366,000 people in employment, 1,297,000 unemployed and 8,675,000 economically inactive in the quarter from June to August 2019.
As our chart this week illustrates, the numbers in employment fell by 486,000 over the following 18 months to the quarter from December 2019 to February 2021. Over the same period, there were 385,000 more people aged 16 to 64 recorded as being unemployed and 106,000 more as economically inactive. This was a net increase of just 5,000 as the normal growth in population was offset by migrants returning home at the start of the pandemic and a higher death rate than normal as a consequence of the pandemic.
Over the subsequent 18 months to the quarter from June to August 2022, employment of those between the ages of 16 and 64 recovered as the economy reopened, growing by 520,000, while unemployment fell by 518,000. However, the number economically inactive continued to grow, increasing by a further 218,000.
This resulted in a net movement over the three years of 225,000, comprising 34,000 more people in employment (to 31,400,000 in the quarter ended August 2022), 133,000 fewer unemployed (to 1,164,000), and 324,000 more who were economically active (to 8,999,000).
The numbers who were economically inactive in the June to August 2022 quarter comprised 2,419,000 students (up 103,000 from three years previously), 1,726,000 homemakers (down 254,000), 2,662,000 who were sick (up 424,000), 1,181,000 in early retirement (up 61,000) and 1,011,000 others (down 10,000).
This is not the total workforce, which in the quarter to August 2022 also includes 1,355,000 aged 65 or over in employment (up 27,000 from three years previously), 24,000 who were registered as unemployed (up 7,000) and 10,994,000 economically inactive (up 355,000), the majority of whom were retired.
Not shown in the chart is the change in the number of vacancies, which fell by 188,000 in the 18-month period from 812,000 in the quarter from June to August 2019 to 624,000 in the quarter from December 2020 to February 2021 and then rose by 635,000 over the following 18 months to 1,259,000 in the quarter from June to August 2022, a net movement of +447,000 over three years.
There has been much debate about the rise in the number of people who are categorised as long-term sick, which is believed to be down to a combination of ‘long Covid’ and NHS treatment backlogs.
The big jump in vacancies over the last three years – to a point where there are now more vacancies than the number of people recorded as unemployed – is putting significant pressure on businesses that are struggling to recruit new workers.
This position could change rapidly, however, with many commentators concerned that the cost-of-doing business crisis could result in a sharp rise in unemployment and a fall in vacancies over the next six months as consumers reign back spending in response to energy costs, rapidly rising prices, higher mortgage payments and an increasingly uncertain economic outlook.
