It is one of the most “identified” structural failings of the UK economy. A shortcoming, we are told, that lies at the core of why the UK will see no growth next year, and indeed more generally, why the British economy is the basket case of the globe’s leading economic actors. Of course, the matter in hand here is the “hopelessly weak” productivity of the UK labour market.

The question we ask in response to such claims is, if labour across the UK private sector is so terribly unproductive, why, for so long, has ever more been added, with workers paid ever more for their services? So much so, in fact, both employment and wage growth recently reached record-highs.

Addressing the above “conundrum”, are we supposed to believe employers within the UK are charitably/uncommercially hoarding labour and paying for “zombie” workers? Well, as explanations go, this is absurd; all the more so given how low redundancy frictions are within the UK private sector.

Could it be instead that somehow it is more affordable to use poorly performing labour than investing in fixed assets? Well, after years of an ultra-low cost of debt, this hardly explains matters; if labour could have been replaced, it would have been. For there would have been a shift from “manpower to machines” if the former were not doing a productive enough job.

There will no doubt be those claiming that its years within the EU’s single labour market gave the UK so much “cheap” labour, its private sector gorged upon it even in its least productive forms. The reality, however, is that as much as the UK did indeed draw in workers with comparatively modest education and experience, it also attracted those so highly talented, they raised the UK’s average labour productivity bar.