Stagnation

The IMF has for the third time in a year downgraded the UK's predicted level of growth, now predicting that the UK economy will grow a measly 1.75% in 2011. There's bad news for young job-seekers as well:

Several times in the report the IMF says the likelihood is that the UK and other developed countries will see rising unemployment this year with the potential for social unrest increasing. Developing nations, which have huge numbers of young people, will also be badly affected.
"Unemployment poses grave economic and social challenges, which are being amplified in emerging and developing economies by high food prices," it says.

"The young face particular difficulties. Historically, for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has been about two and a half times the rate for other groups.

"Though youth unemployment typically increases sharply during recessions, the increase this time was greater than in the past: in a set of eight countries for which long time-series of youth unemployment are available, the increase averaged 6.5 percentage points during the great recession, compared with four percentage points in previous recessions," it says.

Unemployment among Britain's 16-to-25-year-olds was 974,000 last month and is expected to exceed the politically sensitive 1 million mark on Wednesday when official figures are published.

 What will it take for George Osborne to change his mind about cuts and start giving the economy the stimulus it needs?