A recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) on Managing Conflict at Work, shows that work place conflict costs the average employer around 350 days of management time every year. In addition employment tribunal claims cost the average employer about £20,000 a year, rising to over £210,000 for those employing 10,000 or more people.

The most striking feature of this week’s government announcement of new ways to tackle problem families was the figure work. Apparently the 120,000 worst problem families in the country cost taxpayers on average £75,000 a year. That is the cost of benefits, housing, social work, police time and the rest, as a small army of

So we’ve this equal pay day. Opening line of their report on it: The gender pay gap is described as the difference between men’s average pay in work and women’s average pay in work. They have been told, again and again, (not least by ONS and the Statistics Commission) that you should not be using “average” here meaning

This week the £26,000 absolute cap on benefits is back in the news. To many people £26,000 sounds like a lot of money. It is, after all, the average wage. The idea that anyone out of work should get more than the average family appears offensive. That is why this policy plays so well with

FORMER Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell became the latest senior political figure to be engulfed in the expenses scandal last night.

Caveat: I am not an economist, I just like playing with numbers. Consider an economy with 3 classes of people. Class C: 50% of the population, earning an average of $50,000 per year, and spending all of it. Class B: 49% of the population, earning an average of $100,000 per year, spending $95,000, and investing $5,000. Class A: 1% of the population, earning an average of $1,000,000 per year, spendi...

Did you read that an astonishing 140,000 UK households are pocketing more in WELFARE benefits than the average take-home wage. The families are living on handouts worth in excess of £20,000 a year, official figures show. The enormous payouts dwarf the incomes of millions of hard-working families who are struggling to cope with the recession and the rising cost of living. The average sala...

Unemployment continues to rise in Scotland with 188,000 now out of work - an increase of 75,000 on last year.

OK,  so toll road may or may not be of value. So, how do we try and work out whether it is of value? In the spring of 2006 it attracted just under 60,000 drivers a day. By the start of this year, the figure had fallen to just over 40,000, marginally

Here's their August house price index, a few days early. There's been a bit of mucking about with seasonal adjustments - the August figure on page 3 is actually 2.75% lower than the July figure, not 1.9% as headlined - but let's divide the August average by the February average = 0.9175. Assuming prices continue to fall at this rate, the non-inflation/deflation adjusted total falls ...