“We need to make more stuff, using the same number of people...”

So says Stephanie Flanders, in this broadcast from the Today programme in which she explores whether or not the growth in employment this week is a good thing. The key, of course, is productivity and the economy’s capacity to grow, and therefore to recover. She explains the interrelationship between manpower and output with her usual clarity,with a brief reference to both sides of the issue, and to the short term and long term consequences of the recent rise in private sector employment - thus giving an ideal essay plan!. This is such a key concept in AS macroeconomics (and A2 as well) that I think this two-and-a-half minute piece is well worth saving and using with new groups of economists next term.