Economy

The most striking figures concern early-career hiring. According to the jobs site Adzuna, UK graduate vacancies fell to 8,383 in July 2026, down from 15,397 a year earlier — a drop of around 46% and the lowest level since the firm began tracking the …

Ofgem confirmed that the cap for the period 1 October to 31 December 2026 will rise to £1,723 a year for a typical direct-debit customer, up from £1,663 in the third quarter. The regulator stressed that the headline figure is not a maximum bill …

Bank Rate is the interest the Bank of England pays commercial banks on reserves, and it anchors the wider cost of money. When it changes, it feeds through several "transmission" channels that economists have long mapped.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes a monthly vacancy series based on a survey of employers, capturing the number of unfilled positions for which firms are actively recruiting. Vacancies are a "flow" indicator ofDemandfor labour: when businesses feel confident about future orders, they …

The gap is now so narrow that almost any uprating closes it. To push the full new state pension above £12,570, the government needs an increase of only about 0.18% — a rise the triple lock guarantees to beat comfortably.

England has not completed a major new reservoir since the 1990s, even as the population has grown and climate change has made supplies less predictable. That is now changing. The government has thrown its weight behind a programme of new reservoirs, describing them as …

The centrepiece is the draft Industrial Accelerator Act, published in March 2026, which aims to liftManufacturingto 20% of EU GDP by 2035 and to attach local-content conditions to public procurement, subsidies and state aid. But the strategy is broader than any one bill. It …