Knowing and Making

I met someone last week who is starting a new business related to outplacement - which, in case you haven't met that piece of jargon, is " the process of helping to find new employment for redundant workers, especially executives ". It led me to wonder whether the labour market is more efficient nowadays - at least among professionals and younger people. In theory, information technology and the Internet should make it easier to find suitable jobs and also quicker to fill them with suitable candidates. If this is true, a recovery from recession should be faster. Here's why: All realistic models of the labour market will include some unfilled positions in new or evolving businesses. Any business as it changes to meet newly identified demand will create new positions (of course, other positions will be eliminated too - so there are always unemployed people as well as unfilled posts. The state of the economy will determine whether there are more of one or the other). Mar...

I have added a link today to Mark Easton's excellent blog on the BBC. He looks in detail at social statistics and sociological research about the UK and the policy implications. The latest article is about knife crime and examines whether an apparent (to journalists) surge in stabbings is actually real, and the subtleties of what's happening in different parts of the country. David Cameron, among other politicians, is predictably using this as a campaign message in the Glasgow East by-election. When I grew up in Glasgow hardly a week would go by without someone promising to "chib" you although "coshing" was also popular and doesn't qualify as knife crime. In reality, though, I never saw or heard of anybody being stabbed in 15 years living there. Maybe I was just a bit too middle class, but I think perception is very different from reality in this area. Still it's intriguing to see that the Tories will "make it their mission to repair the broken...