VAT RISE WILL COST JOBS, WARNS BRC
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has warned that a hike in VAT would reduce demand for goods and services and cost 163,000 jobs over four years. In its first year, a VAT rate of 20% would reduce the deficit by £11.3b, but by the end of the 12 months there would be 30,000 fewer jobs in the UK - across all employment sectors - than if there had been no increase, an analysis commissioned by the BRC has found. After four years, that figure would be 163,000 fewer jobs.
The BRC said there was no "silver bullet" that will allow the Government to raise large amounts of revenue without having a substantial effect on the economy. Employment, consumption and GDP would all be hit significantly by tax rises, it added.
GRADUDATES GLOOMY ABOUT JOBS
Final-year undergraduates for 2010 are gloomy about their immediate employment prospects, with confidence in the graduate job recruitment market at a 15-year low, new research shows. Of the 16,000-plus students surveyed by High Fliers Research in March, only a third expected to find a graduate job after university, and 14% said they hadn't decided what they will do next - the highest proportion since the graduate careers survey began in 1995.
One in three feared many entry-level vacancies will be filled by 2009 graduates, and one in six said they would have decided against university if they had realised how tough the graduate job market is. The survey also found that confidence in the graduate job market was at an all-time low, with 45% of university leavers describing prospects for new graduates as "very limited". Fewer than one in six finalists who applied for graduate positions said they were "very confident" of landing a definite job offer before graduation - even less than in 2009.