4,100 jobs or 0.3 job growth in 5 years, is this news or a sad fact of Welsh life?

Both the news readers and commentators on BBC Wales Today last Friday did their best to sound shocked at the report findings from Oxford Economics, a respected economic forecaster, that said Wales would be at the bottom of the list of nations/regions by a considerable margin in creating jobs over the next 5 years and that Wales won’t get back to 2008 employment levels till 2025 slower than every other region in the UK, including the North East of England (where 22,000 jobs are expected to be created in the same period) the area Wales has most in common with economically.

When compared to Scotland and Northern Ireland things are even worse, Scotland is predicted to create 65,300 jobs equivalent to 2.5% job growth while Northern Ireland will create 21,000 equivalent to 2.6% job growth making Wales look even more like the poor relation than it already is, not that any of the political parties will actually admit to any failures on the economy over the years mind you.

The figures state the Welsh economy would create 4,100 jobs from now until 2015, that’s just 820 jobs created a year and to put that in some perspective current unemployment in Wales stands at 131,000 and well before the thousands of jobs in the public sector are cut in the coming years

Also worrying from a Welsh perspective, the report pours cold water on the current Government thinking of rebalancing the UK Economy to achieve stronger growth in the regions outside London and the South East of England, stating that the arguments about the UK’s finance industry (based in London), being bad for the real economy but good for the Treasury’s tax take have been around since Victorian times and as long as they drive UK growth other factors are ignored.

That means the new Economic Renewal Programme from WAG is even more important to the current and future health of the Welsh economy and makes the decision over slashing support to small businesses look even more foolish and flawed.

The reports publication will inevitably bring another round of the blame game with Labour and Plaid Cymru blaming the Tories and Lib Dem for the Cuts and taking Wales back to the 1980’s and the Conservative and Lib Dems blaming Labour for their poor management of the Welsh economy for the last decade and Plaid Cymru for the deeply flawed Economic Renewal Programme they launched last week.

But maybe the fact our Assembly Members who broke up for the Summer recess last week and won’t have a chance to debate the report’s findings in the Assembly until September tells us all we need to know about how seriously our politicians take issues about the Welsh economy, the answer not very seriously at all.Any source