The Oracle Spoke

I don't have direct productivity data in this dataset, but let's read the tea leaves from what we *do* have — and they're not promising.

Real pay growth has been anaemic and *falling*: from 1.1% in November down to 0.6% by February 2026. That's barely ahead of inflation. In a genuinely productive economy, real wages should be rising consistently because workers are producing more value per hour. Instead, we're seeing nominal pay growth collapse from 4.8% to 3.8% over the same period while inflation stayed stubbornly around 3.2-3.8%. That's not the signature of productivity gains — that's wage stagnation with a thin inflationary veneer.

Meanwhile, vacancies have been steadily declining — down from 739,000 in November to 711,000 by February (a drop of 28,000 in three months). Claimant count is rising again, up to 1.694 million by March from 1.650 million in January. Youth unemployment stuck around 16%. These are labour market *softening* signals, not the hallmarks of an economy squeezing more output from its workforce.

The structural tell? Economic inactivity remains locked at ~21%. That's over a fifth of the working-age population neither working nor looking for work. You don't fix productivity with a fifth of your potential labour force on the sidelines — especially when real wage growth suggests the people *in* work aren't seeing meaningful returns to increased output.

**Bottom line:** Without actual productivity figures, the circumstantial evidence is damning. This looks like managed stagnation, not improvement.