Are office workers lonelier than they were during Covid WFH? Business A third of Brits feel lonelier at work than they did during the pandemic, with almost a fifth regularly going a full day without speaking to anyone. And while businesses around the UK push to get employees back into the office, more than half of workers admit to messaging colleagues on platforms like Slack and [...]
‘AI is not killing all these jobs’: LinkedIn boss on UK hiring slump Tech Hiring in the capital is down 32 per cent from January 2019, a steeper fall than in any other region tracked by LinkedIn, as higher interest rates and corporate cost-cutting weigh on firms that dominate London’s labour market. Across the UK, hiring has slowed by 24 per cent on pre-pandemic levels and 10 per cent [...]
Treasury still has £5bn to spend on Covid-19 – taking total bill to £385bn Economics The Treasury has said it still needs to spend £5bn more on Covid-19 measures more than four years after the last lockdown restriction was lifted, taking the total estimated costs to taxpayers to £385bn. In a cost tracker update on Thursday, the government said it had already spent £380bn on Covid-19 support since the pandemic [...]
UK manufacturing at four-year high but costs rise at pandemic pace May 1, 2026 The UK manufacturing sector broke to a four-year record in April but the constraints triggered by the Iran war threatened to upend growth prospects. The latest Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) from S&P Global put the industry’s reading at 53.7 – its best since May 2022. This marked its sixth consecutive month above the neutral 50.0 [...]
Safe as houses: Value of 1m UK homes has increased by half since pandemic July 17, 2025 Around one million UK houses have risen in value by more than 50 per cent since 2020, according to new research. House prices have increased by a fifth (20 per cent) on average since 2020, according to Zoopla. The property platform attributed house price growth to pandemic and lifestyle-led changes in buyer requirements that have [...]
Randox: Losses widen at Covid-19 testing giant June 30, 2025 Losses have widened at Randox, which was one of the major Covid-19 testing providers in the UK, just a few years after raking in a profit of more than £200m. The Northern Ireland-headquartered business has reported a pre-tax loss of £51.8m for the year to 30 June, 2024. The loss comes after Randox posted a [...]
Easyhotel significantly slashes losses as return to profit nears May 21, 2025 Easyhotel significantly slashed its losses as it took a huge step towards returning to profit for the first time since before the Covid-19 pandemic. The London-headquartered budget hotel chain has posted a pre-tax loss of €1.8m (£1.5m) for 2024, down from the €10.5m (£8.9m) it reported for 2023. The latest pre-tax loss figure is the [...]
Editor’s Interview: Charles Tyrwhitt founder – ‘No point whinging about the government’ March 24, 2025 The founder of Charles Tyrwhitt, Nick Wheeler, has told City AM that there’s “no point whinging about what the government are doing or not doing, because they’re not going to change,” adding “I’ve got to get on and make my own decisions.” His comments came during an interview with City AM in which he lamented [...]
Preparing for war: What we didn’t learn from the pandemic March 12, 2025 The health service may not have been ready for the pandemic, but the rest of government was even less prepared. As we brace for a potential war, it’s time policy makers listen to that warning, says Joe Hill Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general, famously asserted that war was the “continuation of politics by other [...]
That video call could have been an email: After four years, are Brits sick of WFH? December 23, 2024 There is a brilliant novelty about working from home. Household amenities are always within reach, transport fares are reduced to the difficulty of moving from your bed to the desk, and no one steals your food from the fridge. But, after more than four years, has it become a nuisance? Around 40 per cent of [...]