UK Labour Market data released this morning show that the trend of rising employment and falling real wages is set to continue. At a UK-wide level, the decreases in unemployment are quite impressive, particularly for youth unemployment but figures for earnings at GB level paint a more sober picture...

The NERI’s Quarterly Economic Facts contains a range of indicators on the public finances. One of these indicators compares government revenue as a percentage of GDP in the EU and the Republic of Ireland. Total general government revenue is largely obtained from taxes and social security...

ews of rising house prices, fewer households in negative equity, falling dole queues, rising spending in the shops and the long farewell to the Troika together with a relatively benign Irish summer, so far, have lifted the economic mood a little in the Republic of Ireland. In the North the spillover...

Adam Smith, a Scottish political economist and philosopher of the 18thcentury is famous for having written The Wealth of Nations. He is less well known for having written an important work entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiment. The latter work is a very important contribution to moral and political...

As noted in this blog last week, there has been a significant recovery in the labour market for both Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. However it was also noted that the pace of recovery in the labour market has not so far been reflected in economic growth. While UK economic...

As individuals transition from unemployment to employment they experience losses of welfare payments and entitlements, gains in earned gross income and they begin to pay income taxes and social insurance contributions on their earned income. To assess this impact it is possible to calculate a...

There were conflicting messages in the statistics released today on the Northern Ireland economy and labour market. On the labour market side, both measures of unemployment have fallen significantly for the three months from March to May of this year. The claimant count (literally a count of those...